


So I'll Finish

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Mystery, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-04 02:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock accepts an invitation to enter a celebrity TV quiz it is of course unthinkable that he might not win.  Hubris may be about to be his downfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So I'll Finish

Sherlock was not nervous, precisely, but he had not appreciated the unexpectedly long wait. When he was finally prompted to move he took a moment to run a slightly sweating hand through his curls and tug his jacket straight before he strode silently down the sound dampened corridor and through the heavy steel door into the darkness.

There was a spotlight on the deliberately grim face of his interrogator, another on the empty leather chair facing the man. Done for effect, and he had to admit it worked. Sherlock resisted the urge to look around the dim room. Look confident. Cocksure, John had said yesterday- was it only yesterday? He knew John was nearby, yards away in the dark, constrained to silence. Sherlock hadn't felt this alone since he'd returned to Baker Street a few months earlier.

_John had been against this from the start._

_"You're not a celebrity!"_

_Sherlock was mildly amused that the first line of attack should be lexicographical. He reached across the desk for his Oxford._

_" **A famous person, especially in entertainment or sport. The state of being well known.** My public recognition is similar to that of a footballer or soap actor. I qualify as moderately famous."_

_"Notorious, perhaps," John countered._

_"My reputation was comprehensively cleared. As you well know."  
_

The introduction had been delivered to camera. Someone in the unseen audience coughed twice. The cue was delivered and Sherlock rose smoothly, walked steadily to the black leather seat. 

"Your name?"

"Sherlock Holmes."

They'd rehearsed this several times. Totally unnecessary; it was the simplest of exchanges.

"Your occupation?"

"Consulting detective."

"Sherlock Holmes, you have..."

Humphrys had missed a line. Unprofessional.

"...two minutes on..."

 

_He'd had an extensive dispute with the producers about his specialist subject. They'd unreasonably rejected "compositions of tobacco ash" as too narrow. Agreement had almost been reached on "major criminal conspiracies in the 21st century" until the BBC lawyers got wind of it. Finally they'd settled on "forensic chemistry from 1963 onwards"._

 

"...the life and works of Professor James Moriarty."

There was a slight smile on Humphrys's face. Sherlock's mind was racing. A joke. He should have expected it. Christmas Special television show producers were prone to jests. He would be expected to play along in good humour.

"Starting... now."

 

_"But why on earth do you want to do it?" John had returned yet again to the fray. This had been going on for days and it was increasingly irritating. "Reciting a few facts to order on television, competing against a few C list celebs... come on, Sherlock. That's not you."_

_"You're making assumptions. You could be making some coffee instead."_

_"I'm not the only one making assumptions, Sherlock. What if you lose? Have you even thought about that?"  
_

 

"James Moriarty was christened in St Paul's Church, Ardmore, in the Republic of Ireland under what name?"

He was? How on earth did they know? "Pass."

"Moriarty broke into three London-based institutions in the space of half an hour. The Bank of England was one. Name the other two."

That was easy. "The Tower of London and Pentonville prison."

"Correct. How much was Richard Brook offered by the Sun newspaper for his story?"

Sherlock had no idea. Maybe it was time to find out if Humphrys did. "Fifty thousand pounds?"

"Five thousand pounds. Professor Moriarty's seminal paper entitled "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was published in which scientific journal in 2001?“

Five thousand? That was distinctly insulting. "Pass."

"What pattern was on the tea set used during the meeting in Baker Street directly after Moriarty's controversial acquittal?"

John Humphrys seemed entirely focused on the question cards in front of him. The audience was silent. The answers to these questions could not be found in the police's files. What was going on?

Another minute and a half. Collect more data before formulating a hypothesis.

"A map of the British Isles." That truncated description should be acceptable; the questions and answers so far were running a little behind the target timings.

"Correct."

The questions kept coming. Twenty one in total; Humphrys had kept it slow for an underperforming contestant. Six might be considered information in the public arena. Five related to interactions with Moriarty that Sherlock had considered private knowledge. The rest- who had set these questions, and, just as importantly, why?

"You passed on six questions. The transfer of funds from the Bank of England was made to Credit Suisse, the kidnapping took place in March 1997, the song referred to was "London Town", the body was removed from the rooftop by Sebastian Moran. "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was published in "Earth, Moon and Planets". And the name that James Moriarty was christened with? Patrick James Murtagh."

The question matter smiled warmly at him. "Sherlock Holmes. At the end of that round you have scored eleven points with five passes."

Sherlock's eyes were locked on John Humphrys. Data. Murtagh. Moran. So much more data, if it could be believed, and he had no idea what to do with it. Jim Moriarty was dead. 

After a couple of seconds he remembered to nod acknowledgement and get to his feet. He broke with his instructions enough to cast a look around for John, somewhere in the audience, as he walked back to his chair. There, second row behind him and looking about twice as stunned as Sherlock felt. Sherlock sat with hands folded on his lap, his heart still beating a little faster than usual, and watched the next contestant take his place.

The young TV chef was quizzed on Eastern European cooking. His pronunciation was poor and his history worse; he had apparently never heard of Yugoslavia. Eight. 

The rugby player succumbed to a bad attack of nerves and obtained only five points on some programme called Eastenders. 

A retired cabinet minister tackled Church music without fear or hesitation but the subject was far broader than his research went. Ten points, no passes.

The final contestant was a TV actress; like all the others she was unknown to Sherlock. She had picked a manageable subject and done at least some homework; fifteen points and two passes on the life and works of Emily Bronte. 

At the end of the first round Sherlock was in a poor second place. Of some equal significance was the evident fact that for everyone else the show was going exactly as rehearsed. At least three people on the set must know that his questions had been switched and none of them were saying anything. This wasn't an on-screen Christmas joke by the programme makers; it was something else entirely.

 

_"Have you even seen the show?"_

_Sherlock had sighed inwardly at John's perseverance. This dispute was due to run for some time. He would be required to counter all the predictable objections, one by one. For a moment he was tempted just to retreat to his room but there was still a week until the recording. It was highly unlikely that he could avoid his flatmate for that long._

_"Several times."_

_"Right. And did you happen to notice what sort of questions they ask?"_

_"The specialist subject round is trivial for anyone with an organised memory. The setters frequently take all the questions from a single reference work."_

_"Yeah. No problem. What about the general knowledge round, Sherlock? All the stuff you've deleted?  
_

 

The second round went in reverse order. The footballer failed to conquer his stage fright and got another three points. The chef got a handful more. The ex-minister found his feet with a creditable fourteen and no passes. Sherlock walked towards the black chair again with fourteen needed and the actress still to go.

Could this be retrieved? So many of the questions were trivia, stuff he'd long since discarded as no use to him. His plan had been to pick up twenty three points or so in the first round, then apply rapid deductive reasoning to the unknowns. Together with the questions he did knew the answer to- usually about 5 to 7 per round - this should be enough not just to win the round but to get the thirty two points he needed. He hadn't reckoned on interference. 

Thirty two was now out of the question, which made the entire exercise worse then futile from that point of view (data, though, Such unexpected data!), but dropping out now had few advantages either. Were there more surprises to come? Without knowing what the hell was going on he would simply have to do the best that he could, always an unappealing prospect.

First was the purposeless chat for the cameras to get through. John Humphrys was beaming at him, owl-like, from the podium. Was this the optimum point at which to challenge the man about the first round? Would that disrupt whatever might be planned for the second? He was acutely aware of the cameras on them, the silent audience. He would do it when the cameras were elsewhere; he directed a tight, get-on-with-it smile at Humphrys.

"Sherlock Holmes. What a year you've had. Surely you must be the only detective ever to have solved the case of your own murder?"

"Without researching the point I really couldn't say." 

The man caught the hint of his glare, moved smoothly on. "Twelve in the first round, and twenty four to beat. Your general knowledge questions start... now."

 

_"It's for a case." Pause. "It's not for a case."_

_Sherlock hadn't looked up from the paper he was skimming through. John was fond of these contradictory leaps of faith. "One of those is likely to be correct."_

_"It's not for a case." John sounded a little surer. "You would have told me. Besides, you keep complaining that you haven't any cases right now. And no case would need you to go on Celebrity Mastermind anyway."_

_Sherlock contemplated the matter for a couple of seconds and came up with three scenarios that would require just that. People had so little imagination._

_"So if it's not work, it must be personal." John was narrowing his eyes at Sherlock. It looked rather ridiculous and he said so._

_"So." John repeated, ignoring his comment. "Personal. I bet it's a childhood thing. No..." and Sherlock could almost hear the cogs grinding round, oh so slowly, "I bet it's a brother thing. It is, isn't it?"_

_He flipped open his laptop. Sherlock started counting seconds, silently. And kept counting, long past the fifteen that he'd mentally allowed. What was the man doing? It was a trivial enough Google search._

_The seconds stretched to a minute. Sherlock got bored waiting. "1990. He lost in the third round."_

_John looked at him over the screen. "1990? How old was he? Six?"_

_"Seventeen."_

_"Right. So you're going to prove that you're smarter than a teenager? It's a bit petty, isn't it?_

_"I didn't ask your opinion." He swept the paper up and retreated to his bedroom to finish it without further interruptions._

 

The general knowledge questions were precisely as expected. Sherlock got ten right and came third.

The lights went up as the producer thanked the audience. Behind her Humphrys was getting ready to leave. The cameras were finally off. Sherlock strode across the floor, careless of the hallowed format, rested his arms on the pulpit, eye to eye with his interlocutor. The man looked moderately shamefaced, Sherlock noted, Interesting. 

“Who told you to switch the questions?”

“Ah. I believe it was your agent’s idea. You’ll really have to talk to Eleanor- the producer. I was only told about it this morning. Obviously I’m terribly sorry if it caused any embarrassment. We assumed you’d know….” He tailed off. 

“Who set the questions?”

“One of our normal people, I think. Eleanor will know. Really, you are going to have to talk to her. I just read them out.” 

He tried a deprecating smile which Sherlock ignored. “You changed your introduction. Messing with the format. Introducing gimmicks. Didn’t you even protest? “

“Well, yes, I did, as it happens.” Humphrys pulled himself up a little taller. “I was told that your agent had been promised that things would be done this way. Some mention of a forthcoming autobiography? I was very unimpressed, but at the end of the day what could I do? It wasn’t negotiable, I was told.”

That had the ring of truth about it. Pressure, somewhere along the line. Sherlock would have to work backwards. The producer, next.

He cornered her, literally, as the last of the audience were leaving. She clearly didn’t want to speak to him at all, but he had her boxed and she couldn’t get past him. Humphrys had merely been embarrassed that something he’d fronted hadn’t turned out well. This woman-Eleanor- knew that she’d done something wrong. So why had she done it?

He straightened up, deliberately looming over her, his voice harsh. “Who told you to switch the questions?”

“I can’t talk to you right now, Mr Holmes.”

“Rubbish. Who told you? “Voice deepening, “They’ve been blackmailing you, haven’t they? If you won’t answer I’ll have to ask your staff, and your boss. Who was it?”

She crumbled, visibly. “Please be quiet! It was only your agent. He just wanted an exciting show. I tried to tell him, but…”

“I don’t have an agent.” Sherlock said, flatly. “Try again.”

That did surprise her. “But that’s who he said he was. From that agency with the funny name. Hubris something. Look, I’ll talk to you later. In my office. Not here.”

A small crowd was starting to gather around them, with John hovering on the outskirts, looking worried.

“I’ll wait.” He had no intention of letting her out of his sight. The questions had claimed to know Moriarty’s real identity; he needed to know what was going on.

Half an hour later he and John were sitting in Eleanor’s office looking at a crisp red and black business card with “Hubris Unrestrained” and a telephone number.

“What was his name?”

“John.” She frowned, looked across at John. “John Watson. I thought it was you. The papers said you two were… well, friends.”

“He used my name? Cheeky bastard! Did he look like me?”

“I never met him. The card was delivered and after that he rang.”

“What did he sound like?” Sherlock asked.

“A bit scary, to be honest.” The blackmail had been something so minor- some expense claims that were probably legitimate- that Sherlock was surprised that she hadn’t just told him to go to hell. But if he’d been intimidating that might make the difference.

“Who set the questions?”

“Abby Squire- she’s one of our regulars. I’ve got her expenses claim form.” Eleanor called up a form on her computer. “Here.”

Under “materials purchased” there were three books from Amazon- all autobiographies of Jim Moriarty. Sherlock was certain that none of them existed. He took note of the address on the form. Abby Squire was next on his list. He took the card with him when he left.

As they came out of the BBC building a long silver car drew up and the passenger door opened.

“Sherlock.” Mycroft’s voice was crisp. Sherlock contemplated walking straight past, but his brother would no doubt be persistent. He sighed, audibly, and climbed in. 

“Well done.” Mycroft said. “That was a remarkable performance. You must be very proud. What on earth made you think showing off like that was a good idea?”

Sherlock ignored him, spoke to John, squashed up next to him,

"What did you think of the questions?"

His flatmate shrugged. "Well, I knew the answers to a couple, which was more than I would have done with forensic chemistry. But I thought you'd get more questions about Moriarty right than that. Your score was a bit... surprising... I guess."

"Embarrassing, John means to say." Mycroft added. "You were made to look both ignorant and fatuous. One can't dine out, so to speak, on the whole brilliant detective versus evil nemesis story for months and then fail to even recall the man's name without generating a certain amount of ridicule."

"I did not fail to remember it," Sherlock was acerbic. "I did not know it, and not did you or anyone else."

"Apparently John Humphrys did." John said. "What did he say? Patrick James something?"

"Murtagh."

"Was he right?"

"It will be relatively easy to verify.”

“No,” Mycroft’s voice was sharp. “Twenty three apparent clues handed to you in public- on camera!- surely you wouldn’t be so stupid as to follow them up? Whatever his name was once, Jim Moriarty is dead. There's no crime scene here; just an attempt to lure you on a chase using your pride and curiosity. Walk away, Sherlock."

"And then what? Someone who can corrupt this flagship of propriety- what else might they do to get my attention?" He glanced involuntarily at John, endangered once already to force his hand. To have it happen again would be intolerable. "I have no choice."

"You have a choice." His brother's tone was low in warning. "This arrogance, to think that you are the only person who can keep him from harm, is what they are counting on. Do nothing. I can close this down."

"And Moriarty?"

"Is gone. His name doesn't matter, Sherlock. His history is irrelevant. They'll have you chasing shadows down the pathway to your destruction. Leave this to me. I'll make sure your performance is quietly forgotten. That's all that's needed."

"Sherlock." John reached out a hand to touch his, a rare gesture. "I think your brother may be right this time. This is obviously a set up. Last time…well, last time you nearly died, remember? Maybe you should ignore this, do something else instead."

“You think this…Hubris…can outwit me?”

“Moriarty did. Nearly did.” John amended, hastily off Sherlock’s glare. 

“Jim Moriarty is dead. Whoever set this up has overreached himself. He used your name.” 

John pressed the tips of his fingers into his eye sockets, looked up. “Sherlock. Please. Let Mycroft deal with this. Forget about it. I have a really bad feeling about this Hubris, whoever he is.”

“A really bad feeling? What sort of deduction is that?” 

“A soldier’s one. Please, Sherlock. Just forget about the whole thing.”

The argument continued most of the way to Baker Street. Sherlock’s final concession was grudging and ill-tempered. Hubris had ruined his carefully staged performance, and the questions had stirred a curiosity that could not simply be quashed. The tea-set – surely that had to come from Moriarty himself. Who had he told before he died? And Murtagh- was that really Moriarty? But John and Mycroft were united, determined, and persistent. To investigate was to follow the trail that Hubris had laid, and Hubris could be assumed to have malevolent intentions.

“Deal with it, then,” he said, eventually. “Just don’t screw it up, Mycroft.”

“You can trust me not to do so.” 

Beside him he felt John’s tension ease. 

 

Back in the flat Sherlock refused John’s conciliatory offer of coffee and food, and retreated to his bedroom to sulk. The day had not gone as planned, at all. That tea-set. And Sebastian Moran- now that was a name he had come across from his investigations into Moriarty’s network. The man had been elusive; he had worked as an assassin for Jim, but his fellows had been reluctant to reveal even what little they did know about him. Gambling and shooting tigers; the only firm rumours Sherlock had been able to pick up. Yet Hubris knew his name. Who the hell was Hubris? What did he want, apart from to embarrass Sherlock on television and show off his own knowledge of Moriarty’s operations?

And Sherlock was supposed not to care. Impossible. 

He curled up on his bed, his thoughts racing around the various bits of information offered. He might be unwise to act but no-one could stop him thinking.

His phone beeped, interrupting his thoughts. A number not in his address book; he glanced at it, recognising the number instantly from the card. Hubris. He sat up straight, opened the text.

It was a website address; a personal picture upload, apparently. It might be nothing of the sort. Sherlock typed the address carefully into his laptop, it being considerably better protected from malware than his phone, and pressed send.

A photo of a hand. Caucasian, male, in his twenties. The thumb was outward, the forefinger upwards, the other three curled into the palm. Sherlock frowned at it. Hubris’s hand? Someone else’s? The photo space seemed to belong to some young US girl; her blog mainly consisted of complaints about high school. The photo had been uploaded over two years previously. 

He put the image back into a search, found dozens of identical copies. Each one was tagged the same. “Loser”.

Hubris had sent him an L sign. For loser. Nothing more clever, nothing more sophisticated than that. It was enough. Sherlock slammed his hands down on the laptop keys, grabbed his phone. His hands were shaking slightly as he typed,

_I will find you  
SH_

He got no reply.

 

Sherlock had determined to investigate the Hubris incident without letting John know he was doing so. He had no desire to have the arguments over, and he was aware that his response to the text might be described as over-emotional. 

Local newspapers provided information about the burglary of Abby Squire’s house directly after she had provided the Mastermind questions. Sherlock hacked into her Amazon account, found no record of the purchase of the biographies of Moriarty, though he was sure that she thought that she’d bought them from there. Hubris had managed to place them with her and remove them again without suspicion. The man, or woman, was good. 

The questions that she’d selected from them, and the answers, were now on his laptop, each with their own notes. Rather than chase all twenty three at once he’d decided to concentrate on five answers both representative and intriguing.

Patrick Murtagh. He’d traced the birth records and junior school registration, got no further. The boy hadn’t been registered with any local high school. Sherlock needed to go to Northern Ireland to investigate in person.

Sebastian Moran. Who had supposedly removed the body from the rooftop. Very few people knew that there had been such a body; it had disappeared before the police arrived and hadn’t formed part of Sherlock’s narrative when he returned. Somehow he had to trace the elusive Moran and question him.

The tea set. How had Hubris known about the tea set? Had Moriarty talked, and if so to whom?

The payment that the Sun was going to make to Brook. Sherlock suspected that any reference to Brook was likely to be significant.

“Dynamics of an Asteroid”. Why on earth would Moriarty have written a scientific paper? He’d found apparently genuine articles citing it, but the archives of the journal in which it was supposedly published weren’t online. His request for a paper copy was apparently languishing with the publisher’s assistant.

Sherlock had got no further by the time that Mycroft visited, two days after the show was recorded. He looked around the flat suspiciously, hunting for signs that Sherlock was not keeping his word. Sherlock watched him, expressionless.

“I have arranged for your deeply unimpressive performance to be removed from the finished recording.”

“Thus sparing the family name, Mycroft. Fortunately I don’t need to bring myself to thank you since I’m well aware that you did it for your own purposes.”

“Arrogant and ungrateful as usual. Try to stay away from television in future. It’s not a medium that flatters you. And let this be an end to the matter.”

Sherlock snorted. "An end, when you still know nothing. Your singular lack of curiosity is why you'd make a dreadful detective.” 

Mycroft stood up and straightened his jacket. "We went through this already. Moriarty is bait, Sherlock. Don’t be stupid.”

Sherlock was never stupid. He watched his brother leave without another word. His research into the questions over the next few days remained extremely careful and he got nowhere.

 

A week later they were eating an early dinner when John's phone rang. John balanced his tray on the sofa to answer it. 

"Yes?" 

A long pause. "Possibly." His eyes met Sherlock. "I can pass on a message."

Someone wanting Sherlock. John was a useful buffer at times like this.

The pause was longer and Sherlock could see John's jaw clenching. Getting angry. Sherlock considered taking the phone but John could be trusted to hand it over if it was critical. He ate another piece of spaghetti and waited.

"I'll tell him. Your number?" John scrawled it down, stabbing the paper hard, jabbed the off button without a civil sign-off. 

"That," he said, cold and hard, "Was Kitty Riley. From the Sun on Sunday. Apparently they are running a story tomorrow about you pulling out of Celebrity Mastermind because your score was rubbish. They have video of your performance which they will be running on the website. They would like to give you the opportunity to comment."

The episode with Sherlock's part omitted was due to run the next day.

"It could just be someone from the BBC wanting to make money from the story." John suggested, into the silence. "Or even someone from the audience."

"No. The timing is perfect. It's Hubris."

"What are you going to do?"

Sherlock pressed his fingers together, thinking.

"Phone her back. Tell her we'll meet her in the Artful Dodger at eight pm and she can have her comment then."

The pub was Saturday night crowded, stools all taken, most of the patrons standing around with pints. Sherlock could pick out half a dozen journalists; the entrance to Wapping was a mere couple of hundred yards away. Riley was waiting for them with a half finished cocktail in her hand and a notebook in her designer bag. Her smile was glittering hard and triumphant.

Sherlock strode over to her, smiling. "Kitty. Let me buy you a drink before we start."

She was briefly thrown, recovered fast. "That's very kind of you. I thought that you didn't like journalists, Mr Holmes."

"I'm feeling particularly benign towards your profession this evening. I imagine it is the prospect of another significant lump sum from News International for doing no more than instructing my lawyer." 

He turned away before she could answer and pushed his way to the bar to order another margharita for the woman and two pints of bitter. When he turned back it was to find that John had acquired a table through his usual arcane mix of pleasantness and solid presence.

Sherlock pushed the drink towards Kitty. "Consider that one on your employer. A hundred thousand pounds plus costs buys a great number of these."

She wasn't much shaken, unfortunately, by the reference to the previous libel case. "That's old news. We won't be intimidated, Mr Holmes. This story has legs and we are running with it tomorrow. Our lawyers have cleared it. If you want to sue, go ahead, but you'd do better to co-operate." She took the recorder from her bag. "An interview with you, suggesting maybe that it was all a bit of a joke- we could run with that, I imagine. Better for you than people thinking that maybe you're not as smart as all that- I guess that could be a bit of a handicap in the detective trade?"

John made a disgusted noise. "That's your offer? An interview with Sherlock and you'll run the story anyway?"

She leaned back, relaxed now. "Maybe you'd like to make a statement on the record, Dr Watson? What do you think of your friend's behaviour? I understand that you were at the studio when the programme was recorded; were you surprised when it wasn't broadcast? Or did you know that he'd suppressed it already? Pillow talk, perhaps?"

Sherlock raised a quick hand to silence John's inevitable outburst. "Would you like to know why the incident wasn't broadcast? The real reason?"

"Yes?" She was leaning forward now, eager to have something to twist against him, to make the story bigger.

"Tell me where you got your story, and I'll tell you."

A snort of disbelief. "A journalist never reveals their sources. Surely you know that, Mr Holmes."

Stupid woman. He put on his deliberately imposing voice. "Everything you say reveals something. Do you think you can talk to me and keep your secrets?"

To his surprise she laughed at him, putting down her ridiculous drink to point a finger. "Don't try to pretend you're all superior at me, Sherlock Holmes. I've seen the tape. Music, literature, politics, history, science, even your own cases- tell me, Mr Detective, is there anything you do know about?" 

He sighed, theatrically. "I know that you ought to go easy on that drink. You haven't eaten anything all day; you're living beyond your means which is why you're desperate for the bonus for this story. A middling reporter's salary doesn't stretch to a cocaine habit."

He looked down to her shoes and back. "And that flat's far too expensive for one but your latest boyfriend walked out a couple of months ago and you're stuck with the rent till the lease is up. So you're buying your clothes from charity shops and skipping meals, and hoping no-one at work notices, because they're vultures when they spot something dying in the sun.

"Rubbish." She'd gone pale. "Liar. You're making it up!"

"That from a tabloid journalist!" Sherlock reached out to take her hand. "White powder under your fingernails. Saturday is the busiest day on a Sunday paper so you're not likely to be relaxing and kicking back with your friends. Cocaine today means a hurried dose in a toilet on your own. That's addiction, not recreation. Shall I carry on?"

"No." She was quieter now, a note of pleading. "Look, I can't pull the story. I can't! It's with the printers now. I can't change anything!"

Sherlock hid his brief surprise. He hadn't been exerting pressure, just showing her what he could do. But if she thought he would spill her secrets, he could use that. 

"Hang on. What about Sherlock's comment?" John interjected. "You said you could print that."

"Not tomorrow. I was going to do a follow-up for Monday's Sun." She looked younger now, miserable. "The boss said I couldn't speak to you till after the print deadline, just in case you find some way to stop it."

Sherlock saw John's shoulders drop. It didn't matter what they printed. What mattered was finding Hubris.

"My offer still stands. Tell me about your source, and I'll give you the story for Monday's paper." The unspoken threat hung there.

She glanced around the pub at the other oblivious drinkers, nodded. "All right. I'll tell you everything I know."

What she knew was very little. The raw video footage of the whole show on BBC tapes had arrived anonymously from an unknown source two days previously together with edits showing Sherlock cut out of the show. It was a master tape- she’d had it verified by sources in the BBC. She had no idea who had sent her the bonanza, and she didn’t care.

“A master tape had to be someone from the production suite,” Sherlock suggested. 

“Not necessarily. They had a bomb alert and the building was emptied while they were working on taking your bit out. Anyone could have walked in and taken it.”

“What sort of bomb alert?”

“IRA, I think.”

Sherlock shook his head. “The IRA aren’t active on the mainland.”

“Well, I don’t know. That’s what I was told.” She was obviously tired, hungry and irritable. He left it there, gave her the story for the next day. She didn’t believe him, but he knew she’d print it anyway.

“One last question. I want to know how much the Sun agreed to pay Richard Brook for his story." He carefully avoided looking at John.

"Oh!" She laughed at that, surprise and genuine amusement. "That was one of the questions! So much for your bloody deduction! You looked like an idiot, you know that? Fifty thousand pounds, you said! Not likely!"

"Just the answer, Ms Riley, and we’re done." 

She shrugged. "What the show said. Five grand. He was a real pushover. I told him he'd make the rest when we serialised his diaries, if they were any good."

Sherlock didn't think she was lying. "Who knew about the five thousand?"

"Me. The features ed. Mohan might've had to authorise it- he's the editor. The finance office. No-one else on our side. Brook might have told someone. Oh, and it could have gone to Leveson by now."

"Who's Leveson?"

Her look changed to one of total derision. "The enquiry, of course. God, don't you know anything at all? Go on, get out. You've have your bloody question. I need to go home.."

She wasn't going to give him anything else without further pressure, and his hand wasn't strong. He had enough to be going on. An accurate answer. Now he had to work out how Hubris could have known.

 

“We need to talk, Sherlock.”

He had been expecting this; John had been quiet in the taxi home, looking out of the window while Sherlock read up on the Leveson enquiry on his phone. John would not approve of the story he’d given Kitty, nor of his asking about the Sun payment. This was going to be boring. Maybe he could just skip it. Sherlock opened his laptop, ignoring his partner.

“Come on, Sherlock. We do need to talk about Hubris. Surely you don’t want to just let him get away with this?”

He didn’t, but he hadn’t expected to hear that from John. Sherlock looked over the screen at him. “You and Mycroft told me to do just that.”

“Yes, well. That was before he did this. The press are going to be bloody awful, you know. They hate you anyway. That story you spun Riley- that’s a bit of damage control but it’s not enough. We need to find Hubris and stop him while you still have a reputation at all, or no-one’s going to hire you ever again.”

Loyal John. Sherlock was attacked and he came out fighting. “We do, and we will. We’re flying to Dublin tomorrow, in search of Patrick Murtagh.”

 

"I've got one."

Superfluous. Sherlock could see the folded tabloid in John's hand. "Here."

John glanced around. The airport concourse was sparsely populated on an early Sunday morning but far from empty. "Someone might recognise you."

"Several people have recognised me already," Sherlock pointed out. "Three have taken photos. It happens. Irrelevant." He had been equally unconcerned by the journalists doorstepping them as they left the flat. John had naturally been flustered but it hasn't been John's photo they were after.

"I don't think it would be wise to have anyone catch you looking at the paper. What Kitty didn't say was that they've put it on the front page. Why don't we catch this plane first?"

Sherlock couldn't really see how being photographed looking at the article could make any difference to anyone but the plane was ready for boarding anyway. They settled in the deserted first class section and John dropped the paper onto Sherlock’s lap,

"A dreadful pun." Sherlock poked a disdainful finger at that hat photo, surfaced yet again, under the headline DISASTERMIND! "Couldn't they think of a better?"

"Cone on, it's pretty good for the Sun. I can't believe they put it on the front page, though. You're hardly that famous, and it was only a quiz!"

"I took a large amount of money and a public apology from them. Proprietors and editors don't forget." 

He read the couple of paragraphs under the headline, turned to the inside for the rest of the story which was illustrated by several stills from the recording, clearly picked for the briefly surprised and puzzled expressions that had apparently crossed his face.

"This confirms what we were told; the story appears to have come from the post production suite." Two small before and after photos illustrated how the removal of Sherlock from the shots of the grouped contestants had been achieved. The article promised video of 'ShowOff Sherlock's Biggest Blunders' on the website. 

The paper and the website, with its gleefully nasty and misspelled Your View readers' postings on Sherlock's presumed shame took them most of the journey to peruse fully. Sherlock finally ripped the relevant pages off and folded them into his pocket, left the rest of the paper behind on the plane.

 

"That was a little anti-climactic." John tossed his passport onto the table. "No kidnapping, no mugging, no gun fights. The only violence was getting back through our front door.”

"Oh, I don't know." Sherlock slid onto the couch. "There was the knee-capping threat."

"I forgot about that one. Coffee?" From the kitchen.

"Please." Sherlock pulled the slim folder of papers from his bag, started to leaf through, looking for one in particular.

"So," The noise of the kettle in the background. John was standing at the door. "Was the charming gentleman with the enthusiasm for patellae one of Moriarty's?"

"No. Real IRA, like Patrick Murtagh's father." He'd found what he'd been looking for, stuck the photocopy up on the wall with blutack, Somewhere in the room...he started searching. Around here somewhere.

"That man was too young to know anything useful. The family disappeared right after the older Murtagh's death in the cocked-up bombing attempt. They almost certainly changed their surname, started over with a hefty lump sum in pension from the IRA. No-one in the organisation would have kept written records of where they went."

He'd found the photo of Moriarty on trial, stuck it up next to the one of the child, considered them both.

John called through from the kitchen. "So Moriarty's father was a terrorist martyr. That could explain a great deal."

"Only if this is Jim Moriarty."

"You think it's not?" John came to stand by him.

"I can't tell," Sherlock admitted. "Seven is so young an age, and faces change with puberty. The eyes look right, and the shape of the cheek bones. It could be."

The boy stared down at them from the school group photograph, clearly unsure whether or not to smile for the camera. He was a little shorter than most of his peers, his thick dark hair unruly.

"They disappeared when he was eight. If this was Jim Moriarty then we know little more than we did before. If it's not..." Sherlock shrugged. "A lead considerably less useful than it first appeared. I suspect we may find it's not the only one."

"Hubris playing games."

"Yes." He took a swig of the coffee. "While I'm jumping through his hoops what is he doing? I doubt that wild goose chases and press packs are all that he intends to plague me with."

He has expected no answer, just John's familiar worried frown.

"Never mind." He looked back at the photos. Needs must. "I know someone who might be able to confirm a match from these pictures." 

That raised a smile. "Consulting an expert, Sherlock? I've never known you admit that anyone else could do something you couldn't!"

"This isn't just somebody else." He grimaced. "And it seems that there isn't any alternative. We'll go tomorrow."

 

A phone rang, sharp and shattering his concentration. His phone, on the arm of the couch. He ignored it.

A few minutes later the phone rang again. "Turn that off," he snapped at John .

John was frowning at the phone screen. It was still ringing. "Off!" Sherlock repeated.

“It says Hubris, Sherlock” John brought it over to him. 

"Ah." Sherlock picked the phone up. "Yes."

"Enjoying your fifteen minutes of fame?"

The voice was male, smooth, accented for upper middle class London, but there were barely perceptible, slightly unnatural pauses between the words, and no background noise at all.

"How about using your real voice?" Sherlock countered. "After all, I may have no desire to trade remarks with a computer. You can hear me; that's hardly equitable."

The response came after a second’s delay. The man was typing into a speech program. "Let's not make this too easy, shall we?” Pause. “This is an asymmetric game.” Pause. ”You need to find out about me, but I know everything I need to about you, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock paused for half a second, thinking fast. "If this is asymmetric, what is your winning condition? What are you trying to achieve?"

“You'll know when I get there, I assure you."

"And if I refuse to play?"

An artificial laugh. "You were the one who chose to be a celebrity.” Pause. “You started this one, so I'll finish.” Pause. “It's all about dynamics, after all, isn't it?" And the phone went dead.

 

6am and Sherlock woke from a restless sleep to angry voices in the street below. There were photographers obstructing the pavement, blocking the entrance to Speedy's and the proprietor wanted them moved. As Sherlock rolled over and into a stretch, still listening, his phone rang.

"Hardly your department, Detective Inspector."

"Apparently anything to do with Sherlock Holmes is my department." Lestrade sounded barely awake and not particularly happy. "Just get them to go away, will you?"

"How?"

"I don't know! Get John to tell them you're not going to come outside while they're there."

"I fully intend to come outside, whether there are photographers there or not. I consider the tabloid press a complete irrelevance."

Snort. "That will be why I'm looking at your exclusive interview in the Sun this morning, full of total bullshit and quoting me as your source, Sherlock! The police didn't pull your Mastermind performance for operational reasons. We don't even have an open file on Jim Moriarty any more. You told us he was dead."

"He is dead."

"Well, then. We wouldn't care if you answer questions on him till you're blue in the face. I don't like being your fall guy, Sherlock, particularly when you can't even be bothered to give me a heads up first. Get the damn street clear now and I just might keep quiet about your crap, this time."

Lestrade hung up. Sherlock considered for a moment, decided that it might be wise to oblige the police on this occasion. The simplest method of removing the paparazzi was to remove himself, and he had intended to do so anyway. He roused John with a shout up the stairs, then dressed with particular care. John joined him and he walked out, pausing for a moment on the doorstep to let the cameras flash.

That done, he walked with calm assurance and without answering any of the questions shouted in his face to the kerbside, hailed a taxi and ducked inside, careful not to look as if he were fleeing the pack. 

 

They alighted at Didcot station, at quarter to nine.

"Are you going to tell me who we're going to meet?" John was cheerfully curious. Getting away from the journalists had pleased him.

It was simply too tiresome to go into the explanations, and unnecessary. "Someone who may be useful."

In the taxi it occurred to him that some warning might possibly be due, however. "Don't flinch, and keep your hands in your pockets."

"What?"

"Hands. Pockets. Here we are."

The square-fronted Georgian manor house had been repainted since his last visit, and the fencing repaired. The weeds were still growing unchecked, however. He undid the iron gate, walked up the path, rapped on the door and shoved his own hands deep in his coat pockets.

The noise started before the echo of his knock had died. It increased sharply in volume as the door was opened. The elderly man in a shabby housecoat looked briefly at him without changing expression, then turned back down the hall. Sherlock followed, John behind him. 

The sound was almost deafening now. Sigur pulled the door to the drawing room open and the dogs exploded around him to hit the visitors in a solid mass around their knees, barking and snarling. Sherlock waded forward against the sea of canines into the room. Sigur seemed oblivious to the tumult. 

Slowly the noise subsided as the animals calmed. Sherlock counted heads. Eight. A new arrival; the white bull terrier with a recently ripped face, the new scar of one eye missing. He took an armchair, gestured to John to sit in the one next to him. The scarred and ugly stubby dogs jumped clumsily up at them for a minute, then settled slowly in small groups around the room, panting. The white terrier pushed against John's leg, vaguely affectionate, then sat next to him.

John seemed to think some conversation was required. "She's been in the wars." He patted the dog.

"Adult male badger. 36 pounds. Dreadful mismatch; a bitch that size shouldn't be set alone against anything larger than a summer adolescent." Sigur's voice rose in irritation. "That's what happens when you get complete amateurs setting up a fight."

"Oh." John looked flabbergasted. There was a brief silence until Sherlock realised what the problem was.

“The dogs are the remnants of successful prosecutions, John. One of the very few things that Sigur and I share is a dislike of stupid criminals."

"Oh, right." John sounded relieved. "Poor girl." He scratched the bitch's head. 

Sigur said nothing; he was looking out of the window at the overgrown garden. Sherlock thought he looked a little frailer than last time. Inevitable encroachment of age. He ran a finger along the nearest bookcase, eyed the mixture of dust and hair on his finger. The housekeeper appeared to have left about ten days ago. No chance of refreshments, then.

He pulled out the photos that he'd brought, offered them up for inspection. As he'd predicted Sigur's face registered no real interest, but he did take them over to the piano by the window, where he put them down and stared at them. Minutes passed. Sherlock picked up an open magazine. Wildlife, of course. A lion snarled at him from the page that the man had been reading. Sherlock scanned the print, wondering if it had anything to do with badgers or if Sigur was showing signs of expanding his interests, and a name caught his eye. 

John shifted; he had just realised that his clothes were now covered in dog hair. Sherlock had worn his oldest suit, of course. 

"No."

That wasn't the answer Sherlock had been expecting. There was no point in asking if the man was sure; if he'd had uncertainties he would have expressed them. 

"Very well." He put the magazine in his pocket and stood up. "John?" 

The dogs all roused together, swarmed, barking, towards the hall. Their reaction sounded different from when he and John had arrived. More enthusiasm, no growls or snarls. Of course. He sighed, sat back again. 

"Good morning." Mycroft pushed the flying paws and slobbering mouths cheerfully off his clothes. Casual, Sherlock noted, or casual for Mycroft anyway; corduroy and shooting jacket, the epitome of country squire. "What a pleasant surprise. Good morning, John."

"Hardly a surprise." Sherlock snapped. "You no doubt had us followed from the moment we left Baker Street. What are you doing here?"

"An odd question given that I visit this house regularly, and you don’t."

"Obviously. Your sticky fingerprints are everywhere. Still, the question stands. Why did you choose to come when you knew I was here?"

"How are the badgers?" It wasn't addressed to him. 

"The female’s had her litter. Four pups. If you'd come at dusk I could have shown you." Sigur was briefly animated again. 

"Maybe next time." The dogs had stopped barking but they still fawned joyfully around Mycroft's feet as he walked over to the piano. "The Irish child? You see a trap and you just have to put your head in it. I would have thought that today you'd have more pressing concerns.”

"Yes. Would you like to tell me again how efficiently you dealt with the BBC, Mycroft?"

"There was always a slight risk, the greater because you are so adept at annoying people. Unfortunate. You have made things worse, I see, by talking to them. I will have great difficulty in tidying this one up, but I will of course do my best."

"I can deal with journalists. In fact I have done. If that was all you came to offer then this conversation is, thankfully, over."

Mycroft picked up the photos of Patrick Murtagh and Jim Moriarty. "You're being led by the nose, Sherlock, just as I said you would be. How long do you intend to let your obsession drive you? He's not out there to be found, however much time you waste following red herrings. He's dead."

"It's not Moriarty that I'm hunting." Sherlock stood up, snatched the photos from his brother's hand. "Hubris is aimed at me and I will close it down. This had nothing to do with you any more. Keep out of my way!" He jerked his head at John. "We're leaving."

"Right." John stood up, looked uncomfortably across at Sigur. "Thank you, um, ah...Well, thanks."

Sigur was talking quietly to a couple of the dogs and didn't look round.

"My car is outside; the driver will drop you off at the station." Mycroft.

"Don't you need it?" John looked bewildered.

"I didn't come here merely to be shouted at by Sherlock. I will be occupied here for at least as long as the car will take to get back."

Making a point. Sherlock really didn't care. Sigur obviously had no more desire for his company than he had to be here. Let Mycroft deal with the dogs and badgers and the absent housekeeper.

John was quiet in the car, and until they were seated in the otherwise unoccupied first class carriage. Sherlock was deep in thought. Patrick Murtagh was not Moriarty. The question setter had lied. What did this mean?

"So who was that? Eccentric uncle? Family friend?"

"Sigur Mundell Holmes." There was probably no help for it, now John was curious. "Our father." 

"Your...Oh. I thought...But he didn't come to your funeral!"

"He sees little point in social conventions." Why the lie? Now he couldn't trust anything. That had to be the reason. Lies and truth mingled.

"So when did you last visit him?" 

Him? Oh, Sigur. Sherlock dragged a small amount of his attention back to John. "2009."

"Sherlock!"

That was John's social faux pas voice. Sherlock sighed, exasperated. "It should be obvious that my family neither require nor desire pointless interaction. Sigur had no interest any more in any matters beyond his narrow focus."

"Pointless interaction? The house was dirty. Those dogs are clearly more than one elderly man can handle. He didn't make eye contact once with either of us. It's your father, Sherlock! You can't just neglect him because his conversation bores you!"

Of course he could. "Mycroft deals with the practicalities."

"You just use him for your investigations. Isn't that a little despicable?"

"No." John was failing to understand. "Sigur is neither demented nor vulnerable. He is simply uninterested in me, you, Mycroft and the entire world except insofar as it involves his dogs and badgers. My brother chooses to interfere, of course, because meddling is his hobby. I don't."

"Except when you've got photographs?"

"During his long and distinguished career Sigur had made a particular study of identifying missing children found as adults. His judgement remains reliable."

John snorted. "Useful."

"Yes."

"But you didn't even speak to each other. You have to find that upsetting, surely? Even you?"

"Not at all." Sherlock was irritated with the prolonged conversation. He wanted to get back to contemplating Hubris. "Sigur made his own choices. I do not spend time regretting something that is not my doing." 

He glanced out of the window at the passing countryside. "The important point is that he was certain. Murtagh is not Moriarty. Now could you please stop trying to fit the four minutes of interaction that you saw between my relatives into your own preconceptions of functional and let me think?"

He felt rather than saw John subside into an unhappy silence for the rest of the journey back. Breaking into the flat from the back to avoid the photographers improved the man’s mood sufficiently for Sherlock to get coffee, at least, but he was resigned to the topic being raised again at some point. John was something of a badger himself.

 

"The answer was wrong." How could it have taken him hours to see it?

John looked up from his book. "So your father said. Are you feeling all right?"

"No, listen! The quiz answer was wrong! This..." Sherlock waved at the newspaper cuttings on the wall."...is all about my getting the Moriarty questions wrong. It's supposed to humiliate me. But if the answers they had were incorrect, I couldn't have got them right. The entire question set was invalid. It proves nothing!"

The realisation left him more cheerful than he'd felt for days. John was smiling at him.

"Oh, Sherlock! All this and you're still worried about your score!"

"I'm not worried about it. I'm merely pointing out that no-one could score highly off a flawed data set and that any comments to the contrary are unfounded."

John nodded. "I suppose that's fair enough. So how many of them were wrong?"

Twenty one questions. He'd got 11 right. He knew that the Sun payment was right and that Patrick Murtagh wasn't Moriarty. "Up to eight more, some of which will be extremely hard to invalidate."

John nodded. "Maybe Hubris knows nothing special about Moriarty at all. He made it all up. You could just forget the whole thing."

"Hubris knew about the tea set, and the five thousand pounds. More significantly, he knew when and where Moriarty died.”

And there was the small matter of his sabotaged media profile. Sherlock didn't appreciate being forced onto the back foot, certainly not when cameras were involved. It didn't matter to him what the common herd thought, of course, but it was a poor advertisement for his abilities to the few people who might matter if he let it stand. "He can't hide forever.”

“So what do we do next?”

“You need to update your blog. People are starting to ask why you’ve said nothing about Mastermind.”

John blinked at him. “What am I meant to say, for heaven’s sake?”

“Positive spin. Mention the answers being wrong, for a start. I could write it for you if you like; your sentence structures aren’t hard to imitate.”

“No! No, you don’t! It’s my blog and I write it. It’s not your propaganda machine!”

“Put what you like, then. But write something. Otherwise the Sun gets the last word and we go out of business.”

John shook his head. “I’ll think of something, I suppose. What are you going to do?”

“I have an appointment. I’ll meet you in the Natural History Museum, in two hours. By the fish.”

"Hang on. Why there? What fish?"

"A big one. You can't miss it."

"A fish. Right. Why don't I just text you when I'm there?"

"Huh." It had been a perfectly straightforward direction, but John just had to complicate matters

 

Once thought to have been extinct for 65 million years, the coelacanth had been rediscovered in 1938. Sherlock skimmed the notes next to the exhibit with a complete lack of interest. Now if it had faked its demise for its own esoteric reasons, hidden itself deep within the ocean, only to re-emerge when its plans were complete, it might have had some call on his attention. But fish had no motives, no mysteries, no guile. It had simply gone unobserved.

"It's fascinating, isn't it?" The voice came from behind him but he'd already seen John's reflection in the glass.

"The proper study of mankind is man."

"There's a whole gallery on human evolution, you know. You could donate your brain to it. The first ever specimen of Homo superior."

Sherlock turned away from the long dead fish. "Sorry but I'm still using it." 

"Probably just as well. Given what a hash you made of that question on Darwin they might have refused to take it. You do actually believe in evolution, don't you?"

"Belief in anything is inappropriate. If it becomes relevant to a case I'll consider the matter logically. I doubt that it ever will."

John gestured around at the huge gallery, the dinosaur bones looming over them. "All this, a world of the most incredible creatures and you really care only about humans?"

"Much less even than that. I care only about the very few interesting ones. We need the second floor." He swept his coat around him again and led the way.

"So what are we looking for here, then?"

"Sebastian Moran. The most elusive of Moriarty's henchmen. The only certain fact that I have discovered about him is that he shoots tigers."

They took the wide staircase, bizarre creatures looking down on them from the cases up by the high stone roof. 

"I've been looking for him amongst the traders in animal parts from that region, wildlife smugglers, with no success. A glance at a wildlife magazine suggested to me that my certain fact might be capable of different interpretations."

There was a separate charge for the exhibition, and it was nearly empty even on the Sunday afternoon. Sherlock bought two tickets and the exhibition catalogue from a slightly star struck assistant but declined to provide her with his autograph. He leafed through the catalogue while John oohed at the pretty pictures.

"41 to 50. Over here."

The row of big cats gazed at them from the wall, yellow eyes huge and menacing. Sherlock gave them a cursory glance, turned to the notes on the wall, under the replicated and enlarged signature of the artist

"Ian Moran. Award winning wildlife photographer, known primarily for his studies of big carnivores." He grimaced, amused despite himself at the way he'd been misled. "As I said, he shoots tigers."

John studied the photograph on the wall of the lean, weathered man with the camera around his neck. "This is Moriarty's man? Are you sure?"

"I am now. Look at the signature up there. Moran flows naturally, but Ian is a little angular. It's not the forename he was brought up with. That scar on his face is from bullet shrapnel, not an animal. He's carrying a handgun; the shape there, under his shirt, but it's too small to be any use against something the size of a tiger."

"It's a bizarre cover."

"It's useful. Turn up anywhere in the world without need for further explanation, charter planes, hire the locals. He can carry complex equipment with him across borders and disappear for weeks on end without anyone raising an eyebrow."

He turned to the photographs. "This close-up; the flat ears, bared teeth. Moran was well inside the animal's attack radius when he took this, but he wasn't hurt. He seeks out danger, but he also knows exactly what he's doing. A man like that is- was- perfect for Jim."

"Do you think he's Hubris?"

Sherlock was contemplating the photograph of the man again. "He's on my list of candidates." Right now it was a very short list indeed. "Shall we pay him a visit and find out?"

 

The white Georgian marble doorway had a single unlabeled doorbell, though the neighbouring houses were all divided into flats. The price of a Nash townhouse at the edge of Regent's Park could run into tens of millions. If Moran owned this place he was extremely wealthy. If he rented it all he wasn't worth much less. Not wildlife photographer money. 

Sherlock pushed the doorbell once, waited. Firm steps across a marbled hallway and the door opened.

"Sherlock Holmes. John Watson. Come in." The man was steady and unflustered. He'd been expecting them; the exhibition staff assistant, no doubt, primed to report Sherlock taking an interest.

They followed Moran upstairs to a spacious living room. A large and handsomely marked cat sitting by the open fire froze, staring at Sherlock, then bolted under a sofa.

"She's not used to strangers." 

Behind him John had stopped. "That's not a cat! Leopard?"

"Jaguar cub. She won't attack you, Doctor Watson and they are an endangered species, so I'd appreciate it if you would please take your hand away from that illegally held handgun."

"And have you a license for that illegally smuggled animal?" John retorted. "Or did the zoo just give it to you for services rendered?"

"Touché." Moran's smile was wide and unexpectedly good humoured. "Do sit down, both of you. Tea? Coffee?"

"I think not." Sherlock declined the gesture towards a richly upholstered armchair complete with claw marks, remained standing.

"Did you enjoy the exhibition?"

"It was enlightening." He glanced around. "Moriarty lived here." There were signs of his past presence everywhere, from the collection of books on astronomy and physics in the oak bookcase and the pop DVDs piled by the CD player to the height of the pictures on the walls, set for a man much smaller than Moran's 6ft2.

Moran contemplated him from the doorway. "Come upstairs with me. Both of you."

They climbed two more flights of marbled stairs. Sherlock glanced back once, saw the animal slinking up behind them. An indoor swimming pool, with the glass roof panels closed to the sky. No smell of chlorine; possibly the cat didn't like it. A heap of black towels lay on one of the lounge chairs

"Bracing, I believe the term is." Moran started to undress. Naked, he dived gracefully into the pool, surfaced. "Do come in." His voice echoed around the tiled room.

"Please tell me what's going on, Sherlock?" John was plaintive.

"He wants to talk to me, but not where there's a risk of being recorded." Sherlock folded coat and jacket neatly, started to unbutton his shirt. "I imagine he doesn't trust us at all. It's marginally more civil than simply demanding that we strip."

"I'd have to leave my gun. I don't think that's a good idea."

"I agree. Stay here, cover me. I'll talk to him." Sherlock unbuckled his belt. 

"O. Kay." John raised an eyebrow at Sherlock's bared crotch. "You look a bit vulnerable. Be careful."

"Of course. The jaguar is behind you, by the way."

John spun round, cursing under his breath, as the cat scampered past him and into the indoor greenery at the far end of the pool.

It had been a long time since Sherlock had gone swimming, if you discounted involuntary dips in the Thames. He lowered himself into the chilly water at the near edge. Moran was swimming in a fast crawl that Sherlock couldn't have matched even at the height of his physical fitness, eleven strokes to each short length and a fast underwater turn between them. Not bad for a man in his late 40s.

Impossible to meet naked and not compare, not be compared. If this had been Moran's other intention then Sherlock must take care not to misstep. Hubris was that sort of clever. Was this Hubris?

Moran came close to where he clung to the edge, turned, was off again. Sherlock counted four scars, none anywhere close to fatal. They were about equal, then. The jaguar cub had emerged just far enough to crouch at the water's edge, drinking. Cats didn't like water. He had no idea what jaguars liked and Wikipedia was out of reach.

It seemed that he was expected to swim as well. He contemplated refusing, out of principle, but that might seem to be an admission of inability. He had gone this far. He might as well swim. He launched himself off the edge in the meticulously accurate breaststroke that he'd been taught by Mycroft as a child, did three lengths and pulled up at the far end next to where Moran was talking to his pet. The cat hissed and retreated back into the pot plants. The man turned to him, unsmiling now.

"Why did you come?"

At the other end John was sitting straight-backed on a lounger, right hand in his pocket, on the gun. 

"You've been interfering."

Moran shook his head, sharp. "Not me. I've kept strictly out of your way since he disappeared. I'm not his successor."

"You're living in his house."

Moran shrugged. "I was owed back pay. No-one argued. I live here. Nothing that would interest you."

"So you're just a photographer now? Is that what you claim?"

"I claim," blue eyes stony, "that I don't do anything that might appear on your radar, Mister Consulting Detective. I wasn't responsible for that Mastermind question that referred to Sebastian Moran, and I would very much like to know who was."

Did he believe Moran? Sherlock wasn't yet sure.

"Did you take the body?"

"What body? He just disappeared on the day that you faked your suicide. It took weeks before anyone dared even suggest that he was dead."

"Someone must have taken it. It wasn't there when the police arrived."

"Not me. Not anyone who reported to me. Go hunting elsewhere, Holmes. And when you find whoever thinks it entertaining to bandy my name around in public- that name, not Ian Moran, photographer- do let me know."

Moran pulled himself out of the water. "It's been a pleasure to meet you at last, Sherlock. Now leave me alone. I may not be Jim Moriarty but I do have ways to protect myself. I'm sure you can let yourselves out." He towelled himself down with fast strokes, scooped up his clothes and walked out.

Sherlock eyed the twitching greenery and elected to swim back to the other end before getting out. He discouraged John from talking until they were outside.

"He didn't look too happy," John said as they headed off along the pavement in search of a cab.

"He's either a very good actor or a complete red herring. I’m inclined to believe the latter." Sherlock sighed. "Another false answer. But Hubris somehow knew about the body, and that it was taken before the police arrived. Back to Baker Street. I need to take stock."

 

Sherlock twitched a curtain, watched John struggling to manoeuvre the outsize whiteboard out of the cab and in through the front door. He could go down and help the man get it up the stairs, but any intelligent watcher would calculate the time taken for one burdened person to reach the top. If John was observed through the window earlier than that, the hypothetical intelligent watcher would suspect that Sherlock had come in through the back window again.

Sherlock doubted that the pair of stringers outside were intelligent observers, and it probably mattered little if they suspected his presence or not, but why risk it? John was managing fine. 

He felt distinctly good tempered today. The Guardian had published a moderately intelligent interview with him, and John’s blog entry had several thousand hits. Hubris’s damage had been countered, for the moment, and the man must be closer than ever to being unmasked.

He sat down on the couch and opened up the laptop.

Half an hour later John had finally finished attaching the board to the wall. Sherlock took one of the coloured pens and started at the top.  
 **  
**1 Moriarty's name/False.  
2 Break in-Pent/True/Public knowledge.  
3 Payment from Sun/ True/ Sun staff. Leveson? Police? JM.  
4 Asteroid/ ? Available to searches?/ JM  
5 Tea set/ True/JM, SH.  
  
He paused. "Did you know about that tea set, John?"

"You left it out to be washed up, remember, and I asked why I should do it? It was on the kitchen worktop for a week."

Sherlock nodded. Added **JW**

He continued through the entire lot to 

**21 Transfer funds Bank of England /true or false?/JM. Bank staff.**

then stood back to take a look. John came to stand beside him.

"Are you sure he's dead?"

Looking at the board, it was an understandable question. Of those questions with names by them, only Moriarty appeared in each.

"You're the doctor. He placed the muzzle here"- he opened his mouth to indicate-"and pulled the trigger. The gun fired. He fell backwards, lay still with blood coming from the back of his skull. He showed no signs of life. I didn't check." That was beginning to feel like an omission. "Then I phoned you. For the time of our conversation he didn't move and nobody approached his body."

He shook his head. "My view is that he'd need immediate emergency treatment to have an outside chance of survival, and he didn't get it. Your opinion?"

John nodded reluctantly. "People do survive bullets through the brain more often than you’d think, but that angle, and that wait- it seems improbable. Besides, it was a bare few months ago. I can't imagine anyone recovering enough in that time to make the sort of plans that Hubris had made. Possible, I suppose, but very improbable."

"More likely that he passed on information before his death. The only post mortem question is Moran and false." But passed on to whom? Still six entries that were near blanks; he had little idea to what they referred, let alone whether the answers given were fictitious or not.

Sherlock turned his head towards the window. He had picked up the noise of a car drawing up outside, against the traffic, then the slammed door of an irate passenger. The driver hadn't got out but the car didn't move off. Voices raised: shouted questions, not anger. One, two and... doorbell. 

"That will be our Detective Inspector. Would you please let him in?" He moved to the curtains. Yes, Lestrade had come in a panda car. That wouldn't calm the press down any but it seemed that the Inspector was sufficiently agitated not to care. He'd been mildly irritated this morning. Sherlock had done nothing since to annoy him.

Yet from the sound of those footsteps on the stairs Lestrade was about to come charging in shouting at him. So someone else had done something that aggravated Sherlock's offence, which had been merely to use the police as the excuse for pulling the Mastermind appearance. And now somebody was complaining about that police action; someone influential, someone who could upset Lestrade's superiors, and therefore Lestrade. Who would object? Politicians, possibly. More likely someone directly involved.

Lestrade cane through the door, mouth open, and Sherlock held up a restraining hand. "The Director General?"

"How the hell do you do that? Yes, the DG has just paid a visit to the Met Commissioner, and guess who gets his arse kicked sideways just for knowing you?"

"My commiserations."

"Sod your commiserations, Sherlock. You're going to have to stick your hands up this time and tell the world, or at least the BBC, that you pulled that programme. The Commissioner is really not going to stand for us taking the rap for police censorship when she knows damn well we had nothing to do with it. It's going to get ugly, I'm warning you."

"Noted. However I'm unable to comply. Would you care for tea?"

"Why not? It's just your damn pride, Sherlock. You can't wriggle out of this one, I'm warning you. You should never have blamed us to a bloody journalist."

Sherlock gestured to the couch. "Do sit down, Lestrade, and let me explain. Since you've come all this way you could at least listen."

He saw Lestrade take the armchair, cool down a little. Good. John was lingering at the door, watching.

"Now, I have to admit that when that journalist got hold of the idea that the police were responsible for banning my appearance I did nothing to persuade her otherwise. However I had my reasons."

"You didn't want to take the rap." Lestrade was sullen now.

"I could not, in all honesty, "take the rap", Inspector. I had no part whatsoever in the decision of the BBC not to show it."

"Really?" Disbelief. 

"Really. I took no action at all to have my appearance removed from the recording. I was not asked for my opinion either before or after it was done."

Lestrade frowned at him. "So who did?"

Sherlock leaned forward, deliberately. "Since it seems that you now need to know, I can say, and say this only- a senior member of the security forces was involved."

He sat back again. "You see my problem. Having the press blame the police was a necessary evil. I could not correct her with the truth."

Lestrade wasn't buying it completely. Not yet. He had turned round awkwardly to address John.

"I suppose you wouldn't be in a position to verify this, by any chance?"

John drew himself up to his full height. "Greg. Are you really asking me to vouch for Sherlock? We've been here before, and you were wrong, remember?"

Lestrade was uncowed. "I'm a police officer. I like having multiple eyewitnesses. Humour me."

John didn't look at Sherlock. His eyes stayed on Lestrade. "I'm not going to talk about security matters just to humour you, but that's not necessary anyway. I know Sherlock didn't get the BBC to edit the recording. Satisfied?"

"I suppose so." Lestrade looked weary. "I guess that means the Met will end up taking the rap after all. You're a damn nuisance, Holmes. What on earth possessed you to go on the stupid thing anyway?"

"I was bored." Sherlock said, cheerfully. "It's been remarkably good for ennui."

"It'll be your funeral at this rate. Right, I'm off to tell the Commissioner to tell the DG to talk to MI5, tactfully. The Press Office are going to hate me forever. I'll see myself out."

Sherlock listened to the heavy footsteps going down, and waited. John would either be amused or outraged. Sherlock wasn't yet sure which. That was one of the more interesting characteristics of his flatmate. 

Amused. Sherlock grinned back. "The truth is a marvellously useful device for obfuscation. Let Mycroft deal with it."

He stood up in front of the whiteboard. "I think we've done enough running after Hubris's trails. There are facts enough here. Now I need to think."

 

Two hours later he was still thinking, to no useful conclusion. Moriarty could have passed all this information on, but why? Hubris didn't feel like a random henchman. It felt deeply personal.

A noise outside took him to the window. A crowd gathering a little further up the street; the photographers were running to catch whatever it was.

Ah. He raised his voice. "We have visitor, John. Get the door, will you?"

John moved automatically, even while he complained. "The doorbell hasn't gone."

"It will."

John was at the bottom of the stairs by the time the bell rang. Sherlock heard him open the door, the greeting, the stairs again.

"This is not acceptable." His brother was thin lipped and cold. Really angry, then.

"It was your doing."

"Cleaning up your mess."

"You didn't care about me in the slightest," Sherlock retorted. "This was all about your reputation. Your name. You've made a pig's ear of it, too. Hushing up things is supposedly your specialty. How could you fail so badly?"

Mycroft moved to stand in front of the board. "Ah. The great detective at work. Murtagh. Moran. You did absolutely everything I advised against, didn't you?"

"As a matter of principle."

"You are such an arrogant child, still, Sherlock." Mycroft was still staring at the board. "I thought the Moriarty affair might have taught you some humility, but no."

"I won that, if you recall."

"You came within a hair’s breath of killing everyone you cared about. That's what I recall. You've forgotten that already."

"I don't know why you let that worry you. You weren't on the list."

"I know that." Mycroft turned back to face him, anger clear on his face. "This is all a game to you, still. Chasing these names, playing with the press, spreading rumours about me; you're acting as if Hubris was invented for your own entertainment. Both of you," He looked over at John. "You at least ought to know better. What do games like this cost?"

"The Moriarty case was partly your fault," John snapped. Defensive, Sherlock noted- John was starting to feel unnecessarily contrite. 

"And I learned something. All you two seem to have taken from it is a misplaced sense of invulnerability. These are dangerous people that you're prodding for no good reason. You're stirring up trouble, nothing else."

"And if I stir this up why should you care?"

"Because," Mycroft's voice was clipped and furious, "I might not be on your list but you are family and you remain top of mine. Everything you are you owe to me, but you always were an ungrateful little show off and you've never stopped being so. I'll arrange for the press to leave you alone and get the police off your back but if you insist on chasing Hubris against all advice and reason I will not be in a position to rescue you, and if you spread any more rumours about the security services I will personally make sure that you regret it. Understood?"

"Perfectly." Sherlock turned away from his brother, back to the whiteboard. He heard the man leave without another word.

 

The journalists were gone. Mycroft was at least competent at something it seemed. 

"Post's here."

A brown A4 envelope, handwritten address. That was what he'd been waiting for. Sherlock sprang up to pluck it from his flatmate's hand, curled up on the couch to rip it apart.

"What is it?"

Sherlock flapped the sheaf of photocopies at John. "Dynamics of an Asteroid."

"What? Oh, Moriarty's paper. Is it interesting?"

"Not even the most practised deductive ability can determine that without actually reading it. Coffee and silence, please."

It was not interesting. It was about the composition and rotation of small rocks several million miles away. Slow going, tedious, incomprehensible in places without a more advanced physics background than Sherlock had ever had need for.

"Did Moriarty really write it?" John came out of the shower wrapped in his dressing gown, came to peer over Sherlock's shoulder.

"Allowing for the extra formality of academic writing, the sentence construction appears compatible. Quiet, please. I have five pages left to read."

The paper came to an extraordinarily dull conclusion about the predicted future movement patterns of various pieces of extraterrestrial rock, supported by a long and technically dense table. Useless. Sherlock tossed it across the room in a moment of frustration.

"No help, then."

"No."

"Oh well. I suppose even super-villains start off with boring day jobs."

Day job. Sherlock recovered the top sheet, checked the head of the paper again. Nothing about any department that Moriarty might have worked for. Nothing about the man's credentials apart from that title of professor. Odd, and still unhelpful. 

His phone rang and he snatched it up. An unknown number. Hubris? 

No, it was a Sergeant Keith Brown from the Oxfordshire police. Sergeant Brown had the voice of a man accustomed to breaking bad news. "Is that Mr Holmes? It's about your father."

Nothing to do with Hubris at all. He hadn't got time for this. "What?"

"Well, he seems to have gone missing."

That was unexpected. "When and where?"

Brown seemed slightly taken aback by the direct questions. "Well. A neighbour saw him go out about 8:30, walking the dogs. The dogs came back without him, and there's no sign of him. We've got people searching the nature reserve in case he was taken ill or wandered off."

"Were the dogs still attached to their leads when they came back?"

"I don't know. I'm afraid. They are all fine, though, all being cared for at the pound. Don't worry about them, Mr Holmes."

He had no intention of doing so. "Did they come back earlier than usual?"

"I don't know."

"Well, find out! If they were dragging their leads then he won't be on the reserve. They get let loose before then. If they were back early he must have been taken before he got to the first off road stretch; otherwise on that part of the way back. Understand?"

"Yes." Pause. "Are you by any chance Mr Sherlock Holmes?"

"Who did you think I was?"

"There was a piece of paper on your father's kitchen wall; it just said "Sons' telephone numbers" and two numbers. We've been unable to reach your brother yet."

"What number do you have?” It was the same one that Sherlock had. “Keep trying. His name's Mycroft Holmes. Is there anything else?"

"Does your father have any known medical conditions?”

“No. He’s in remarkably good health for his age.”

“Has he shown any signs of confusion, or forgetting things?”

“Pay attention. He hasn’t wandered off. He’s been kidnapped.”

“Right.” The officer sounded sceptical. “There’s quite a lot of other information that we need; medical, that sort if thing, but we can deal with that when you arrive. You'll no doubt be wanting to get here as soon as possible."

"Yes." 

He put the phone down, looked at John. "My father had been abducted."

A small noise of shock from John. 

"The police won't treat it as a crime scene until I get there; they're going with dementia or a physical illness."

“Of course. I’ll get dressed. Five minutes.”

After John disappeared upstairs Sherlock curled up on the couch, trying to think. Hubris had taken his father off the street. But Sigur had eight ex-fighting dogs with him. Sherlock had seen him walking them on paired leads, splayed out around him. Anything resembling an attack on their owner and they'd respond with aggression. Unless you physically subdued them- but they had all come back home unhurt. Had Sigur gone with his kidnapper willingly? Maybe Hubris had threatened the dogs? With what? Firearms in the middle of town, in the middle of the day? It was a puzzle. 

There were footsteps coming up the stairs. A woman’s. She’d used a key, instead of ringing the bell, though she must know he was in. Sherlock’s pulse beat slightly faster and he stood up, positioned himself carefully, with the poker close to hand. 

It was only Mycroft's assistant. Sherlock felt a pang of disappointment. He'd hoped this was going to be a real lead. God knows he needed one. This was a let down. 

"What does he want now?" he demanded brusquely.

"He's disappeared."

"Mycroft has?" John, coming downstairs, expressed the disbelief that Sherlock felt. 

“What happened?"

The woman- she'd never given her real name in the months that he'd known her- explained briefly, her worry evident. Mycroft had spoken to her on the previous evening, with instructions to get the press off the 221B doorstep. 

“He was,” she said, carefully, “very annoyed with you.” He hadn’t turned up to work this morning, nor had he answered either of his phones. His flat was empty. 

"There are crucial matters that require his input today; he wouldn't make himself completely unreachable by choice. I think something's happened to him."

Sherlock looked at her. This agitation was more than concern for his brother. "You can't tell the police."

"No. There are people who might take advantage, if they knew he was absent today."

"Criminals?" John asked. "Foreign spies?"

She looked surprised. "Oh no. Other parties. It wouldn't be helpful to his interests. National interests."

"Other civil servants." Sherlock clarified, dryly. "National interest has very little to do with it; it's all about an unedifying squabble over territory in there."

"You have to find him, Mr Holmes."

"I am rather busy today but I'll add it to the list." His coolness concealed real concern. Kidnapping Mycroft shouldn't have been easy at all.

“I have the key to his flat; I presume you’ll want to go there first.”

Sherlock shook his head. “I did say that I was busy today. Give me the key. I’ll get there when I can. In the meantime I want details of all Mycroft’s current operations. Email them to this address.”

He ushered her out, came back to pick up his coat. John was looking anxious.

“If this is Hubris, Mycroft’s operations aren’t likely to be relevant, are they? Shouldn’t we go there first? It’s nearer.”

Sherlock smiled. “Never miss an opportunity, John. It’s always useful to see what he’s up to.” And, more serious, “Didcot has the dogs and the dust; they will be better witnesses than Mycroft’s tidy flat, and if we leave it too long the police will certainly screw up the forensics in Oxfordshire. And now we should leave, before any further interruptions.”

The doorbell rang. 

No car this time. Could be anyone. Sherlock ran down the stairs, pulled the door open.

Sebastian Moran stood on the doorstep. "Good morning. Is Doctor Watson around?"

"You need a doctor? He's not here. Try taking two aspirin and going away." Sherlock really did not want a loose cannon like Moran in his flat. John's gun was upstairs. Moran's was in a hip holster close to his right hand.

“Why don’t I show myself in?” Moran pushed past him, took the stairs three at a time. 

“Hello” he said to John, walked past him into the sitting room, stopped to read the whiteboard. He took his time over it. Sherlock let him.

“Interesting.” He sounded as if he could say more, if he wanted to. 

"What are you doing here, Moran? What happened to your surveillance paranoia?"

"Overtaken by events."

"What events?"

Moran walked to the window, glanced down, turned round. "What does the word 'hubris' mean to you?"

Sherlock didn't react at all. Unfortunately Moran had been watching John. "Thought as much. Give."

"You first."

Mistake. The gun was no longer in its holster. "Let's try that again. Tell me everything about hubris and I won't shoot John here in the head."

Loose cannon. Sherlock cursed to himself. "You were wiser when you weren't crossing my path, Moran."

"Hubris. What is it?"

Sherlock couldn't think of any compelling reason to keep quiet about Hubris. It must be obvious to Moran that someone was behind the Mastermind trouble.

"Hubris Unrestrained was the name on the business card of the person who masqueraded as my agent in order to substitute questions about Moriarty in the Mastermind quiz. We believe that he or she has also been responsible for leaking footage to the press in an attempt to discredit me." He grimaced briefly. "An adversary, of some kind. Motive and identity unclear. Where did you encounter the word?"

Moran slid his free hand into his jacket, tossed an envelope by its corner onto the desk. "Ware fingerprints. You'll want to take them."

"Will I?" Sherlock glanced at John. Holding up fine. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, picked up the tweezers and extracted the paper carefully. It said, in neat print, "Hubris". Ink pen, fine nib. Heavy writing paper, torn into a neat small square.

"Where did you find it?"

"On my kitchen table. The house was broken into while I was out."

"Anything taken?"

Moran's blue eyes flickered across his face. "The cub's gone."

Ah. 

"And you're going to get her back."

"You want to engage my services to find a missing cat?" Sherlock didn't laugh, not with that gun trained on John, but it was a struggle.

No trace of a smile from Moran. "Yes."

"Very well." He glanced at John again. Careful. "I urgently need to go to Oxfordshire first, but you are welcome to accompany me. After that we’ll come to your house. Scene of the crime." And somewhere en route they would take the gun, or lose the gunman.

"No." The gun twitched. "You can do it from here. And now." 

“His elderly father has been kidnapped!” John protested. “I’ll stay here with you if you need surety.”

"More importantly, Hubris is responsible for both abductions. Finding my father is the best lead to your pussycat.”

Moran shook his head. "You don't leave this room, either of you." The gun was steady on John.

"I'm not a miracle-worker," Sherlock snapped at him. "I need facts."

Sebastian glanced at the whiteboard. “I’ll give you some. Whoever set those questions was a lying bastard, Eight, twelve and seventeen are crap."

"What about the others?"

"Eighteen looks about right. Don't know about the others. I wasn't his bloody accountant."

"I do at least need to call my brother." Sherlock tried to sound like a worried son. One call to Mycroft’s people should do.

Moran snorted. "You think I'm going to let you call _Mycroft Holmes_ from the middle of a hostage situation? No. Sorry about your family troubles but they'll just have to do without you until you figure out how to get my cub back.”

"I'm not sure that I can." Sherlock waved at the whiteboard. “It’s not enough.”

"If this is about Jim, then no-one knew him like I did. You can fingerprint that paper, Doctor, no sudden moves. Right, Holmes, I need the full questions to work from."

By midmorning Sherlock and Moran had the outline of Moriarty's network scrawled across a dozen sheets of A4. The dead man had had a hand in everything. Links to the police, links to the security services, to the press, to overseas crime syndicates. Half a dozen candidates for Hubris but neither he nor Seb thought any of them were likely. They had neither motive nor style, and Jim was unlikely to have confided personal details to any of them.

"Who you're looking for," Moran said bluntly, "is me. Except that I'm not Hubris. There wasn't anyone else. I would have known."

"Could Moriarty have survived?" John, seemingly unconcerned by the ever present gun. Sherlock knew better. His flatmate was aware of it every second.

Moran shrugged. "He just disappeared, far as we knew. Hell, it was Jim. Surviving was the one thing he was best at. You're the one who said he was dead.”

 

The doorbell again distracted Sherlock. He rolled onto his feet, glanced out if the window. "Police," he informed Moran, briefly. “And Mrs Hudson’s back.” She was already opening the door. "About Sigur, I expect. He's coming up. Stay calm. I'll get rid of him." That to both of them.

Moran nodded, John following suit after a brief pause. 

Just Lestrade. Sherlock summoned a sneer. "They've got you running messages now?"

"In the circumstances, I took the job, yes." Lestrade was looking curiously at Moran. "Could we talk in private?"

Not a chance. "No need. Ian's one of my most trusted clients." The touch of sarcasm was for Moran's benefit.

"Client? What's your problem, if you don't mind me asking?"

"My cat is missing." Moran said, gravely.

"Really? Your cat?" And to Sherlock, "So the press coverage has really hit your customer base hard, then?"

"The message?" Sherlock said sharply.

"Yes. In the circumstances we're co-operating between forces without the issue of a European arrest warrant."

European? For Oxfordshire? "The Met really needs to do something about its parochial outlook."

Lestrade looked momentarily baffled. "I hardly think we can claim jurisdiction over the Republic of Ireland."

Ireland. He'd jumped to the wrong conclusion. Hours with the gunman getting to him. "Give me the facts."

Lestrade nodded, more comfortable. "The Republic's Gardai got a tip-off this morning about imminent paramilitary action. When they went to arrest the suspect they found that he'd also been tipped off. There is now an armed stand off, with two young children as hostages."

"And what had this to do with me?"

"The suspect- the hostage taker- is Patrick James Donoghue, born Patrick James Murtagh. Someone did a Google search and found that he'd been identified as James Moriarty in your YouTube video."

Lestrade checked his watch. "There's a plane waiting at Stansted."

Sherlock was still, thinking. 

Finally he looked up. "Kitty Riley. Journalist, Sun. Check that nothing's happened to her. She needs police protection until this is over."

"What's that got to do with the Irish hostages?" Lestrade had pulled out his phone.

"They're all the same case. Just do it."

Lestrade spoke rapidly into his phone, waited. Listened. "When was this?" And again. "Keep me updated." 

"What happened?"

"A warrant for her arrest was issued by Operation Elveden this morning after a tip-off last night. She's nowhere to be found. What's going on, Sherlock?"

"Later."

"So are you coming?"

"No. Not yet. Call me when you get there; I'll need data."

"You can't not come!" Lestrade protested. "There are two children at risk!"

"I'll come as soon as I can. However I have already undertaken to find this man's cat, and Kitty Riley may not have disappeared of her own volition. 

"Let me get this straight." Lestrade said, slowly. "You're talking about a potential abductions and a siege at gunpoint and you're looking for a stray cat?"

"Yes. Go now. There's a great deal to be done. When you get to Ireland concentrate on finding out who tipped the police off. Murtagh's almost certainly irrelevant."

"Right." Lestrade looked at John. "Are you coming, at least?"

"I can't, right now."

"Because of the cat?"

John glanced at Moran. "Pretty much, yes. Trust Sherlock on this one, please."

Lestrade shrugged. "OK." And to Moran, "I hope you're paying him well, that's all."

Moran's expression didn't change. "Well enough."

"I'll call you from Dublin. Ring if you think of anything."

"Of course."

"I hope the bloody cat turns up soon. Shall I see myself out?"

"Please do."

Sherlock sat in silence for eight minutes. A police tip off for Murtagh, another for Riley,

A text arrived; he picked it up without surprise. Hubris, of course.

_I’ll let you into a secret, Sherlock, since it’s far too late now. The answer was terribly simple all along. All you needed to do was to admit that you hadn’t won._

And half a minute later a second.  
 _  
Your dreadful people are boring me to DEATH. Catch you later._

Eventually Sherlock looked up, at Moran.

"I know where the jaguar is. Can you get a van with false plates here in five minutes?"

Moran's thumb flickered over his phone's keypad. A reply within seconds. "It's downstairs now."

He'd got men surrounding the house, of course. Moran acted like a solo player but he wasn't anything of the sort. Worth remembering.

"Let's go." Sherlock picked up his coat. 

There were two burly men in the back of the white van. Armed, Sherlock noted. They were deferential to Moran, quietly watchful.

Sherlock had brought paper and pen to sketch a map. "We're going into the Zoo by the front gates. The van waits here, by this back gate, in fifteen minutes."

"She's in the bloody zoo? How the hell did she get in there?"

Sherlock didn't bother to reply. The journey to Regent's Park from Baker Street only took a few minutes and he had other instructions. "We'll have to buy tickets, I imagine, to get in, then track down the curator for the big cats section."

"Hell we will!" Moran tossed him a wallet. "My territory now. Dig out the membership pass in there. I know where we need to go. And Watson's staying in the van, just in case you get any ideas."

Wildlife photographer. Of course. "Don't ask questions," Sherlock warned. "Just get them to show us the cub."

Ian Moran and companion got them both past the gates. Moran steered them to a low office building and knocked on the door.

"Is Brendan in?"

The middle-aged man greeted him enthusiastically. "Ian! I didn't know you were back in the country. Come in! What can we do for you?"

"Hi, Brendan. This is Sherlock Holmes. We're after a look at the jaguar cub."

"Sherlock Holmes! So it is! Just like off the telly! A pleasure, man. Yes, the cub. You're investigating where she came from, then? We'd love to know. She's through in the quarantine pen. Friendly little thing; hand reared, obviously."

He led them through to a set of cages away from the public view. Moran called "Moira" gently and the pile of yellow and black resolved itself into the young jaguar who bounded up to the wire and rubbed herself close against him. He buried his left hand in her fur, his right still close against the gun holster. She was chirruping at him enthusiastically.

"As you can see," Sherlock said to Brendan, "the jaguar belongs to Mr Moran. She was stolen from him, but he'll be taking her back now."

"Oh." The curator was temporarily wordless. Then "We weren't aware that Ian kept... We'll, that's good. Good. Of course we'll need a Home Office permit to move her, and we'll need to see your dangerous wild animal licence and import documentation, and confirm that the conditions she's moved to are suitable, but I'm sure that can all be arranged within a few days."

Moran gave Sherlock a long, level look. A great deal at stake, and for a moment Sherlock thought he might back down but after a couple of seconds he stood a little straighter, spoke to Brendan. "I'm a little short on documentation, I'm afraid. Will this do instead?" He drew the gun out of its holster, pointed it, steady handed, at the curator.

"Ian! What are you doing?"

"Taking my cub back. Open the cage."

The man appealed to Sherlock. "I can't!"

"He has a gun, and won't hesitate to use it. You have no alternative, I'm afraid." Sherlock dropped his voice to sound more reassuring. "The animal is tame. It is unlikely to hurt anyone before the police are able to retrieve it, and I'm sure Mr Moran will take good care of it. I can confirm that you are acting under duress. No-one will blame you."

Brendon took another look at Moran's hard eyes. "Ian. This is crazy. You're throwing away your career, everything, for a pet. You know you won't possibly be allowed to keep her."

"Get this cage open or I'll start shooting people. You first."

The cage was opened, and the small number of zoo employees who had happened to come past were locked inside with Brendan. 

"You can carry her," Moran directed Sherlock. 

He looked at the restless animal. It was going to shed hair. "Hardly my area of expertise."

"Just do it. Carefully. Or I'll shoot you and find a staff member to do it. I don't need you for anything but manual labour now, Holmes."

Reluctantly he hauled the animal up under its forelegs. A good fifteen kilos and it wasn't keen on the idea. "Can't it walk?"

"Not in a straight line. She's a cat and we're on a timetable here. Put a hand under her back legs for support." Sherlock did so and the animal stopped struggling.

There was a small office next to the back gate; Moran knocked on the door and got them to unlock it with a bit more gun waving. Sherlock dumped the animal in the back of the van and inspected his fairly minimal scratches as they pulled away fast.

"How did you know she was there?" Moran demanded, both hands now soothing the cub, the other gunmen covering them.

Sherlock tried without success to brush his trousers down. "Simple. What's Hubris done today? Abductions, yes, but what else?"

John spoke up. He sounded fairly calm for someone who'd had a gun pointed at him for hours without a break. "Tipped off the Irish police, and the Met."

"Exactly. He uses the police to do his dirty work, so when he needed a home for this jaguar cub he's picked up- Moira, interesting choice of name, by the way. I'm not surprised you tried to keep that quiet- he found it easiest to have them find it. And standard police procedure in London with exotic wild animals is to take them to London Zoo to look after. Simple. He made no mention of the cub in his text so I was sure he wasn’t still holding it. He might have killed it, admittedly, but this was worth a try first.”

"So you still don't know who he is?"

"No. But I'll find him soon. Would you mind dropping us at Paddington?"

Moran gave the cub another rough stroke. "Police report will be out any time now. We'll change vehicles in a few minutes and I'll take you wherever you need to go. I've a score to settle with your Hubris. He's cost me fifteen years' cover and that's going to be bloody inconvenient."

"Absolutely not." Sherlock retorted. "There are a number of people's lives at stake here. I'm not bringing a man with guns and his own agenda into the middle of events."

"You haven't got a choice." Moran's voice lowered. "You're still a hostage, you and Watson both."

"And are you really going to kill John when I refuse to walk into a police station with you? With all the consequences that would have? Or kill me, and lose your chances at Hubris for good?" His voice was as persuasive as he could manage. "You know I'm the only one who can hunt the man down. I will not take you anywhere where you might kill Hubris before those kidnaps are safely resolved, regardless of your threats, Sebastian. That's a bottom line. You're a poker player. Recognise it."

He was bluffing. He'd let Hubris and all the hostages die- Sigur, the children, all of them-rather than risk John's life, but Moran had worked for Moriarty for years; that had to skew his judgement.

They watched each other for a tense few seconds, then Moran shook his head. "I've already got enough enemies to be going on with." He took the gun from its holster, tossed it to John. "Take that. I'll come unarmed and unaccompanied. But I will come."

"And the police alert?"

"You deal with it. Tell them you need me. It's true enough. If I get arrested then all hell will break loose, I promise you that, and when you catch up with Hubris you'll need allies."

John was silent still, both hands wrapped around the weapon that he'd spent long and helpless hours at the wrong end of. Moran was focussed only on Sherlock. People did that, Sherlock had noticed; used John and then forgot him, as if he were a mere adjunct to the detective.

John was unlikely to accept Moran as an ally, but he would do nothing to make things worse, not right now. Sherlock would rather have Moran with him and unarmed than following and in control of an unknown force. "Oxford, then. Three of us."

 

Sherlock's phone rang halfway up the M40. Lestrade.

"Have you found that bloody cat yet?"

"Yes."

"Good. You're done with that creepy client, then."

Moran, in the driving seat in front of Sherlock, twitched. It might have been a laugh. 

"So you're flying over here?"

"No, I'm going to Oxford. What's happening in Dublin?"

Lestrade sighed. "Bloody mess, like all hostage situations. Best you can say is that no-one's dead yet. I've had the full briefing and while this Murtagh's a nasty son-of-a-bitch I'll be damned if I can see what he's got to do with Moriarty."

"He's got nothing at all to do with Moriarty. Have you got anywhere with the source of the police tip off?"

"Bloody hell, Sherlock! Sometimes you just.." He stopped, sighed. "All right. Yes. Though paramilitary activity's much reduced these days, the Real IRA still provide regular codewords to the police so they can prove their responsibility for stuff. The call to the police about Murtagh used one of the current words, so they presume it's an inside job. I could probably be a great deal more use if you told me what the hell's going on."

"Any news on Kitty Riley?"

"Yeah: she's not been abducted, just made a run for it. Seen getting into a car with her suitcase at five am and she left a note, all about how sorry she was that she'd been a show off, something like that."

Sherlock frowned. Remorse for showing off didn't sound like Kitty, not at all. "Whose car?"

"No idea. Could have been a private hire. She'll be picked up soon. She's not that smart."

John had been silent almost the whole journey. Now he nudged Sherlock's arm. "'Show off' could be 'hubris'" he muttered.

He was right. How had Sherlock missed it? "I want that note emailed to me immediately."

"Of course you do. I'll get it done. Now can I please have some explanation of what I'm doing in Dublin and you're doing in Oxford, and what Riley’s got to do with any of it? You might not have to worry about expense forms but I've got to justify the airfare somehow or it's coming straight out of my pay packet."

Sherlock was reluctant to admit to how little he knew, but he had stretched Lestrade's willingness to act without explanation to the limit.

"Everyone that I have questioned or looked into in connection with my recent investigations into the Mastermind questions has had a seriously bad day today. The person behind all this is identified only as Hubris. I believe he's making a point to me, but I don't know how far he's prepared to go to make it. Kitty could turn up dead at any moment. So could Sigur- my father. Murtagh's doubtless guilty and the hostage situation genuine but the timing- the push at the Gardia today- is all Hubris's."

"Christ. Your father. Oxford?"

"Yes."

"OK. I'll check if anyone's got anything on the name Hubris here, but after that I'm coming back. There's nothing else I can do as a visitor here, and someone needs to take charge of the Riley case. Elveden are mostly a bunch of accountants; they aren't up to abduction. Why the hell didn't you tell me all of this earlier instead of chasing bloody cats?"

"It was a particularly unusual cat, and its admittedly somewhat creepy owner had gone to the trouble of bringing a loaded gun with him, just to make sure I gave the case appropriate priority. When you've got a minute check the London Zoo police alert."

"Bloody hell! You're both OK?"

"Yes. Get me that note."

"Will do."

Sherlock flicked the phone off. "Show off. Hubris. Why didn't I make that connection?" It bothered him. "Tunnel vision. It was just a name to me. Why?"

John smiled, the first time since Moran had threatened him. "The name's an insult, Sherlock. It’s what he thinks of you. Of course you're not going to be thinking about that every time you hear the word."

The implication was clear. "But you are."

John hesitated. "It's not entirely fair, but it has a certain appropriateness. I guess I've been thinking about it so the connection was obvious. Your brother..." He trailed off.

"Called me an ungrateful little show-off. It's clearly a popular opinion." 

Moran laughed out loud this time. 

 

Hours late arriving in Oxfordshire and no-one had called him to ask why. Maybe Sigur had been found safe and well?

Sherlock did not go in for wishful thinking. He directed Moran to the Didcot house and sat back to try the number he’d got provided for reaching Mycroft in gravest need. On the third ring it was answered.

"Finally." The smooth, just too perfect computer generated voice. "I was beginning to wonder what else I would have to do to get you back on track. The kitty was meant to be an amusing diversion, not the main attraction."

Sherlock chose his words carefully. "You've gone to a great deal of trouble today on my account. What's your purpose?"

There was a short pause before the reply. The app, translating the speaker's words into the artificial voice. "To melt your wings and watch you spiralling out of control and helpless into the dark sea." A longer pause. Sherlock imagined the man or woman laughing. "More prosaically, I'm going to start disposing of this morning's acquisitions. A crazed terrorist, a drug-addled hack, a doddering obsessive and a dull bureaucrat aren't the sort of company I'd choose to keep around. Shall we say an hour and a half for each? That gives you plenty of time to scurry around uselessly."

"Give me some evidence that they are still alive."

"Or what? You'll sulk and refuse to play? Be serious, Sherlock." Another pause. "I’ll send you a clue. I know how much you like clues. You can explain it to John, and he can tell you how clever you are. It won't help save them, of course. Number one goes now, and the clock is ticking."

The phone went dead.

"Drive faster," Sherlock instructed Moran.

"Trouble?" The car started to swing wider through the curves, accelerating on each straight. 

"He's threatening to kill the hostages." Sherlock stabbed at the phone buttons. "Come on! Answer!"

"Sherlock?" Lestrade sounded weary. Sherlock could hear distant sirens.

"Why haven't you left? You need to be in London."

"There's a plane leaving in twenty minutes. I've been trying to find out about your Hubris, but no... Hang on!"

Sherlock had caught the sound of the single gunshot. The hustle of reaction around Lestrade wasn't panicked. "Murtagh's killed himself."

Lestrade was listening to a police radio report. "Yes."

"Then we have ninety minutes before Hubris kills one of the others. Get everything about Kitty sent to my phone, and get on that plane, Greg." He hung up. 

Four of them in danger and he could only be in one place at once. Was Didcot the right choice? Should he go back to London? Too late now to change his mind; they had arrived.

The house was guarded by two police officers; they let him and his two companions past. The local DI came round to fill him in on developments. They had a time and place for the abduction; a short length of back alley on Sigur's normal route at approximately 10:20am. Several people heard barking and noticed the loose dogs. There were reports of a silver car, nothing more specific. Forensics had found nothing of interest so far.

Sherlock nodded, dismissed the man impatiently. He needed to concentrate on observation; the hall first, then the whole large house, room after room.

The recently appointed cleaner had come yesterday afternoon. Sigur had eaten alone last night, drunk a glass of whiskey by the fire in the living room, gone to bed early and slept fitfully. No sign of taking breakfast, but an empty coffee mug; Sigur's, from the sugar in the dregs. There was cereal in the cupboard, milk in the fridge and a regularly-used bowl; why hadn't he eaten this morning? 

The dogs' hairs were everywhere: they had jumped all over the bed and the sofas this morning, had milled around the hall excitedly; a low-placed plant pot was knocked onto on the floor. The prospect of their daily walk? The local police had milled around excitedly as well; far too much had been opened, moved, touched. 

Nothing out of the ordinary, except the absence of breakfast. Maybe Sigur had woken late? Maybe he sometimes ate after he returned from the morning walk? It was nothing at all, not on its own.

Sixty three minutes. He couldn't linger, speculating. To the alley next, retracing Sigur's route. He was about to set out when one of the police woman came in.

"Mr Holmes?"

"Yes."

"I found this on the windscreen of the police car." She passed over a evidence bag with a white paper inside. "Be careful Sir!" She reached out to try to take it back when he made to open the bag. "Don't destroy any forensic evidence!"

"I know a great deal more about forensic evidence than you do, Constable." He tugged it out of her reach, extracted the paper carefully.

The note was on a single sheet of writing paper. It read

_Sherlock,_

_In my absence Mycroft is competent to deal with all matters. It is not necessary for you to interfere._

_If I do not return my will is deposited with Linklaters._

Sherlock had been able to forge his father's doctor's scrawl since the age of nine. This note showed changes from then; the slow degeneration of age. He ran his fingers across the paper, then sprang up to open the writing desk under the window. Behind him the others were reading the note, John's voice rising in consternation.

Not necessary for Sherlock to interfere. Not what he'd been expecting, but Hubris logic. The whole thing was designed to make him feel helpless, futile, incapable, defeated. 

Sigur hadn't known that Mycroft had been kidnapped when he wrote this. Even so he had doubtless really been depending on his younger son's deductive powers to return him safely. After all, what could Mycroft have done? Stand there, twirling that ridiculous umbrella, waiting for Sherlock to tell him what to do? Competent? Hardly.

Never mind the wording. What about the paper and ink? Here; his father's stock of writing paper. Sherlock ran a piece between his fingers, matched it up to the note. Identical. The notepaper came from this supply; he'd stake his life on it. 

Pens, loose in the desk drawer. He scribbled a phrase with each in turn. No. The pen that Sigur had used was a good quality fountain pen but none of these pens had the right nibs or ink. "Fountain pen" rang a bell; he pulled the torn piece of paper left at Moran's out of his pocket. Different weight paper but the single word _Hubris_ was scribed with the same pen- the same nib, same ink- as the note from Sigur.

"Look!" He demonstrated, they agreed; John vocally, Sebastian coolly. This must be Hubris's scornful offer of a clue. He wondered if he'd deduced more than he was meant to, or less. No way to be sure.

The pen must belong to Hubris; that was simple enough. But how could the paper be from this room? Sigur's captor had no reason to come here; he was taken from the alley. Why would his father take blank note paper with him on a walk with the dogs? It wasn't particularly significant paper; not headed nor even watermarked. Nothing had been written on it except the words from his father.

He threw it out to his audience. Demolishing their theories might give him a new idea.

"Maybe he just happened to have it?" John suggested. "He picked up two sheets to write something, only used one, stuck the other in his pocket. I do it all the time."

The paper was crisp, with just a single fold. "It hasn't been carried around in a pocket." So how did it get to Hubris? Not like Sigur to carefully extract a single piece from his desk and put it in a folder or case? Did he own a briefcase?

They found a battered satchel in the corner of the room with current court papers for a dog fight prosecution scrunched and disarrayed. Sherlock dismissed the idea that Sigur had taken this paper anywhere. 

So Hubris had taken it. That would mean that he must have been here- in this drawing room- before Sigur went for his walk. Easy enough to knock the elderly man over the head in his own home, smuggle him out of the secluded back garden into the covered drive; why then let him go out with a pack of aggressively protective dogs for company and grab him from a public alley instead? 

Forty six minutes to go and he still had nothing except questions. He pressed redial on his phone, put the output on speaker. The voice that replied on the second ring was familiar and unexpected.

"Sherlock.” 

“Mycroft! Where are you?”

His brother sighed loudly. “Try again.”

Jim Moriarty’s trick. Copycat, or the originator?

"I have three crime scenes, miles apart. Tell him to give me more time." He had the sound turned right up. There were background noises if he could interpret them...

There was a long pause, during which he could hear nothing but a hum that might be air-conditioning, and an extremely faint, regular beep. Then Mycroft recited in monotone,

"You've had all day, and what have you done with it? Do look on the bright side. You may be about to witness the grisly murder of your entire family and an almost innocent journalist, but you have managed to restore a much loved pet to a sentimental murderer. Hours well spent, surely?" 

Sherlock thought he was reading a script out. It sounded scarily like Moriarty. Was there any chance of getting Sigur and Mycroft out alive?

There was a brief rattle in the background.

Sherlock gritted his teeth against a harsh answer. "What do I have to do to get you to release them?"

"Go back three weeks and make better decisions."

None of his choices had been wrong. “I’ll get John to change the blog entry, and I’ll stop looking for you,” he offered.

“Will you make a public statement saying that you tried to cover up your failure by blaming the police?” 

If it bought him time, he’d promise anything, “Yes.”

“Liar. Forty four minutes, Sherlock, and then I’ll…" 

Another voice cut in, close. Female. Sharp. "You can't..."

The phone went dead.

God. He was somewhere public. He was somewhere public, with at least one hostage? Sherlock replayed the recorded conversation. Rattle. Air-conditioning. And someone had interrupted the phone call to chide Mycroft. Remarkably rude, to disrupt an phone call without apology. Why would she do it?

To stop the call continuing. Hubris and Mycroft were somewhere where phone calls were not allowed, and where a middle aged lady would call them out on it without apology.

Forty one minutes. "Where are phones banned? Quick!"

"Theatre? Cinema? Quiet carriage?" Moran suggested. "Waiting rooms?"

"Hospital." John said, absolutely certain. "He's in a hospital. That was a trolley going past."

"Hospital. Yes. And NHS- she would have been more polite in a private one." Sherlock glanced yet again at the clock. Forty minutes. 

John was frowning. "Could be anywhere. London, Oxford? What do you think, Sherlock?"

Moran interrupted. "Why's the hell's he in a hospital? Is he injured? And where are the hostages?" 

Sherlock had no idea. Hospital. Accident? "It wasn't A&E. Far too quiet. He's in a ward." Something was nagging at him. Operation. What was it?

"We've going to the John Radcliffe." If it was any of the others he was already out of time. "Hurry!"

They piled back into the car, and Sherlock took the wheel. Every minute counted, now. He called out his thoughts to the others as he slammed on every bit of acceleration that the car and road would handle.

"Operation. His or someone else's?"

"If it was his he wouldn't have had the phone with him all day."

"Excellent point, John. Someone else's then. One of the hostages? Not Mycroft- his assistant would have known he was going to be missing. He's boringly healthy anyway. So's Kitty. That leaves Sigur."

He took a bend with his eyes briefly closed in sudden realisation. "Sigur didn't have breakfast."

"Fasting for anaesthetic. Of course!" John's voice rose in puzzlement. "But if he's in hospital having a planned operation, how can he also have been kidnapped?"

"I don't know. Ring the hospital. Sigur Mundell Holmes, 14 2 38. Tell then you're me and find out what ward he's in."

He was on the Oxford ring road now, weaving between lanes to overtake everything else as he listened to John making the call.

"Ward 18." John put a hand over the mouthpiece. Sherlock watched him in the mirror and sighed. There was a perfectly good mute button. "Shall I get put through?"

"No."

John thanked the receptionist and hung up. "At least we know it's the right hospital.”

“Read me the note from Sigur again, John.” He hadn’t slowed the car down. Eighteen minutes from here. Twenty nine minutes left. 

John started “In my absence Mycroft is competent to deal with all matters.”

In my absence. 

“Sigur didn’t write it after being kidnapped. He wrote it before going into hospital. He wrote it at home, on his own writing paper, before going into hospital for an operation that he might not survive.”

There was a momentary silence.

“Sherlock.” John said gently. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?” Sherlock was temporarily baffled at the sympathy. He thought his deduction was relatively impressive. 

“That no-one told you he was ill. He’s in a recovery ward now, though. That’s a very good sign.”

“His recovery will be immaterial if we don’t stop Hubris killing him.” Murdering an unconscious man in a hospital was relatively trivial. Moriarty wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.

No-one had anything to say after that. Sherlock abandoned the car in front of the hospital entrance with nine minutes to go and they pushed their way through the busy corridors at a run. 

Ward 18; Sherlock paused outside. Hubris would probably have people looking out for them but there was a slight chance that they might surprise him. He pushed the doors open, walked quickly down the rows of beds. None of them held his father. 

At the end there were two small private rooms. The first was occupied by an elderly woman but when he pushed the door to the second open it held two familiar bodies. Sigur, in bed, apparently unconscious and hooked up to various drips and monitors, and Mycroft, sitting still with his hands folded. He looked up as Sherlock walked in, then past him at the other two. His eyes widened and Sherlock turned to see Moran wrestling the concealed gun from John.

Everything finally clicked into place. Sherlock spoke fast.

“The small man in the wheelchair two corridors back was Moriarty! He can’t have gone far.”

Moran had the gun; he turned and raced down the ward, followed by John, to the consternation of the occupants. There were shrieks and an alarm. Sherlock shut the door and looked at Mycroft.

“I would have scored more than you, if you’d let things alone.”

Mycroft shrugged, controlled and unemotional. “You had to try, didn’t you? You always had to try to beat me, even when there wasn’t a contest to be had.”

The tea set, still sitting on the side when Mycroft visited. The terrorist codes. The dogs, who hadn’t attacked Sigur’s abductor because they’d known him. The fountain pen, neatly placed as always in Mycroft’s jacket pocket. The “cover-up” that had made everything much worse. And Mycroft had been the one to remove Moriarty’s body, of course.

“Jim is dead.” Sherlock needed that final confirmation.

“Yes.”

“Where’s Kitty?”

“Ineffectually hiding. The police will catch up with her in a day or so. Aren’t you going to ask how he is?”

Sherlock looked at the quietly beeping monitors, down at the grey faced man. “What was the operation?”

“Removal of a tumour on his liver.”

“Prognosis?” 

“Forty percent chance success. I’m waiting for the biopsy results.”

There was nothing else to be said about that. Sherlock looked back at Mycroft. “Moran will kill you, I imagine, when he finds out you were Hubris. Was it worth it?”

Mycroft shuddered, almost imperceptibly. “I expected you to recover the jaguar with a little more finesse and consequently no harm.”

“I was in a rush. I thought lives were at stake,” He was still adjusting to the fact that they weren’t. 

“They still are.” Mycroft was watching the monitors, not Sherlock. “What do you intend to do about your associate?”

Sherlock glanced out of the glass door at the confusion. “Send him after Moriarty again, I suppose. I can fake some evidence. Carefully; he’s an intelligent man.”

“And John?”

“Oh, I think John deserves to know exactly what you’ve done. Did you know that Moran threatened him with a gun for several hours? I’ve noticed that doesn’t improve his temper.”

“This was your fault.” Mycroft snapped. “If you’d left things alone when I warned you, told the papers the truth, or better still nothing at all, shown the slightest regard for Father’s health…”

“You really think that you can bully me into some sort of false humility?” Sherlock snarled back. “You cheated on that quiz! I was hardly likely to take it lying down. You set this whole thing up just so I wouldn’t beat your score. Hubris doesn’t describe me, Mycroft; it describes you. Perfectly.

The beeping increased in rapidity and they both turned to read the flashing red figures. Heartbeat increasing…”You’re upsetting him!” Mycroft hissed. “You always do!”

“Don’t be ridiculous! He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

The figure in the bed stirred, spoke without opening his eyes.

“Mycroft.” The voice was weak but authoritative. “What is your brother?”

Mycroft answered without a pause. “My responsibility, Father.” The familiar catechism from childhood. Sherlock hadn’t though of it for years.

“Huh.” Sigur lapsed again into silence. Sherlock thought he was sleeping, now. 

“I’m certainly not your responsibility” he pointed out, in case there was any doubt. 

“Of course you are.” Mycroft sounded tired. “It never stops. That’s the unrelenting horror of having a younger brother.” He sighed. “I just wanted to show you that you couldn’t simply do anything you liked, not without consequences. You learned so little from Moriarty, in the end. Next time Hubris could be a real enemy.”

“I found you within your time limit.” Sherlock pointed out. “If you’d been Hubris, I would have stopped you. You had access to such huge resources and all my personal information and I still tracked you down. If Hubris had been a real enemy I would have won, Mycroft. I don’t need your life lessons and I certainly don’t need your lies. Text me when the biopsy results are in.”

He turned on his heel and left his father and brother behind without another glance. There was only one person in the world who could be trusted now and he was running down the ward towards Sherlock.

“Moriarty got away, if it was Moriarty. Moran’s on the run. Is everyone OK?”

“Jim Moriarty is dead. Everyone else isn’t. And we are finished with Hubris for good, John; that I promise you. We’re going home.”


End file.
